Vengeance of the dead, what the hell

[llamabeast]

Exactly 3 castings is .96*.96*.04

You mean 3*.96*.96*.04

Sorry, couldn't help it

[sum1lost]

Perhaps if non-mindless units didn't count towards kill numbers...?

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Did you mean 'if mindless units' rather than non-mindless?

I'd imagine it hard to get into the hall of fame.

[sum1lost]

Lazy_Perfectionist said:
Did you mean 'if mindless units' rather than non-mindless?

I'd imagine it hard to get into the hall of fame.

Yes. That.

if mindless didn't count towards kills. Or at least if mindless troops weren't counted under the Votd thing.

[DenStoreFrelser]

sum1won said:
if mindless didn't count towards kills. Or at least if mindless troops weren't counted under the Votd thing.

If surviving a VotD means you get twice the number of happinesses the next time around, I doubt there's a second stat for mindless kills, or a stat for "unavenged" (the VotD thing) kills. Depending on what the code is like, adding a new stat for all units could be a pain, especially for such a small thing as a single spell making copies of ghosts, but it's the only solution I can see that wouldn't change anything else in the game.

[Tuidjy]

Why not just make it so that if you survive 75 turns, you live? Nothing else
gets changed, and the exploit stops working.

[OmikronWarrior]

llamabeast said:

You mean 3*.96*.96*.04

Sorry, couldn't help it

No, he was right. If the order doesn't matter, then yeah you'd times the odds by three. However, he's assuming EXACTLY 3 castings, which means only the last casting can be a success. Ergo, order is important, and the only order possible is Failure, Failure, Success. If you want to know the odds of succeeding in three or less trials, you need to independently figure out the odds of succeeding an exactly 1 and 2 trials and add them together (with 3 trials, of course).

On another note, maybe its possible to meet both positions halfway. A, it stinks to die due to a game mechanism clearly designed for other situations. B, it can be thematic and the spell works fine as it is.

My idea would be to simply start "mindless dissolution" on turn 50. This is the rule that mindless beings left with out a commander have a 33% chance of spontaneously dieing every turn. In addition they won't move and will only attack units already adjacent to them. This means any individual soulless unit will only have a ~.5% chance of going all 25 turns with out dissolving. Clearly in large numbers some will remain. That's not the point. Now, the target actually has a chance to finish off the chaff. If they still can't do that by 75 turns... let 'em die.

[llamabeast]

Oh I see where he's coming from now - I hadn't understood he was summing them up like that. Got it.

[Wyatt Hebert]

thejeff: By holistically, I mean the problem of MA Ermor being one of only a few nations that have recruitable mages easily able to cast VotD combined with the double-bless Shadow Vestal rush. The problem seems to be that he couldn't move around due to the rush, and he got lots of kills (and didn't have time for an efficient anti-Undead capability) due to the rush, then got dropped by VotD. Without either one, VotD wouldn't have been as big of a deal.

Honestly, without the capability to spam it, there are much better answers, even Overland answers, to a SC (from what I read).


llamabeast: I do hope I didn't make a mistake. It would have been bad if I had, but I did check it the inverse way, too. The probability of NOT getting a success in the first 3 is 0.96^3 (starting with three failures)*, ergo 1-0.96^3 is the probability of getting a success in the first 3, which is still 11.52%.

Let's see if I understand something about the rules. 1) All units are set to autoroute after 50 turns. 2) Mindless units without a commander or with a routing commander dissolve instead of routing. 3) You cannot retreat in Assassination attempts. 4) VotD is an assassination.

Are any of these incorrect?

This looks like a problem induced by the bug-fix to complete shut off retreat in an assassination attempt. Without substantial changes to the code or changes to the gameplay (allow retreats from Assassinations, which will kill you), or both (allow retreats, but you don't die), I fail to see how this problem can be resolved. The simplest solution might be to allow mindless units to be tagged to retreat in Assassination attempts; this will, of course, have its own share of consequences.

Thoughts?

Oh, and VotD is hardly needed against most combat casters. Earth Attack is probably superior for that purpose (I might be wrong, but that's one tough Elemental, and it tramples quite well). It takes a single path (typically easier to get), costs a bit more, but has no MR check. The only other issue is that it's easier to 'hide' from, but enough races can cast and spam it that it's not a huge problem?

Wyatt Hebert

* I realize that the actual probability will be the summation of the probabilities higher than 3 successes (using that formula), so that yields Sum{x=4->Inf}(0.96^(x-1)*0.04). However, without going through it, it comes close, if not exactly, to the 11.5% chance, so I just left it at that. I might be wrong; my statistics class was quite a while ago, but I think I'm remembering it clearly.

[thejeff]

About the rules:
1) yes
2) yes, normally
3) I believe you can retreat in assassination attempts, you just don't survive?
4) yes.

Point 2 is actually where the problem comes in, I think. There is no commander with VotD, so some special rules are in play. Obviously, despite the lack of a commander, the dead don't dissolve immediately during a VotD. It may be as simple as the check to start dissolving/routing happens when a commander routs or dies. Since there aren't any the check is never made. Adding a check to the 50 turn auto-rout mechanism to start mindless dissolving would be a better fix.