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Forum LockedKing's 2nd Tournament - Bloodthirst For Knowledge

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The_Dude View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Apr 2011 at 23:42
I have not kept records...but my gut says my experience is like Bow Locks.  It seems like there is a much better payoff with Packs over Legions.
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GM Stormcrow View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23 Apr 2011 at 03:20
Originally posted by bow locks bow locks wrote:

Just to balance my earier whinge;

Attackers: Unit: Quantity: Casualties: Survivors:
Commander: hoodietwo Longbowmen Longbowman 1 Damaged for 0, 600 health remains.
Troops: Knights Knights 130 0 130


Defenders: Unit: Quantity: Casualties: Survivors:
Troops: Small Salamanders Small Salamanders 2 2 0


Your victorious troops retrieved:
24 Gold
2 Salamander Claws
from the slain foes.


Right. This is cool. Clearly balanced. Clearly just statistical anomalies.




Hi Bow,

Um.

I could equally pull an example out of the db of someone receiving more than 300 items from a Horde....

Can I ask you to ask someone in your alliance (I'd suggest someone good with numbers... HM perhaps?) to explain the utter irrational futility in pulling a couple of sample numbers out of a hat containing a large number of randomly generated samples and comparing these two sample numbers in order to try and ascertain the probability distribution of what other numbers remain in the hat.

For sure, the risk/reward ratio may (or may not) be fair for the larger vs smaller spawns - but this will *only* be apparent (or not) when you look at all attacks on Legions vs Handfuls as a whole on the entire weighted probability distribution outcome curve.

Drop rates and propensities may (or may not) be adjusted by us, depending on what we find when we look at the data. 

To be clear, we know what the maths says the outcome will be over a statistically significant sample size - the only thing we might alter the maths for are gameplay factors such as the frequency of what *we* want to drop (ie the common vs rare drops), and under what circumstances they drop.

Yours, putting the 'ballistic' into probaballisticly Wink,

SC
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23 Apr 2011 at 03:32
To put what SC said into, well, shorter terms:  the problem is with standard deviation.  The likelihood of an attack bearing average fruits (as opposed to dramatically above or below average) are really quite poor.

Every attack is essentially a gamble.  Knowing that the average should be reasonably favorable, however, means that the safe bet is in spreading your attacks over the largest number of small attacks possible...grinding on the small fish.  (That's a colloquialism but NOT a euphemism.)

Hitting big targets is a strategy best left to players who want to gamble for much higher than average results, as opposed to those with sufficient forces to compete on volumes.  I do somewhat agree with the underlying thrust of Bow's complaint--in my opinion the standard deviation in the statistical model of attack rewards ought to be substantially smaller.  Right now those big costly attacks are way too much like a craps shoot and I haven't seen much evidence that there's even a 50% chance of getting much higher volume or rarity in drops.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23 Apr 2011 at 04:51
In other words, keep the std deviation large on small attacks and narrow it to nearly the average for large, costly attacks. I agree, seems more fair that way, especially if the dice roll is just once per attack. Perhaps, a dice roll/each 10 beasts in the group or each 10 attackers so that the chances of a large attack yielding nothing would diminish to nearly zero while still providing surprises for those only able to attack a small group. This gives more motivation to the large players who are playing for tournament wins, and not merely commander xp, more motivation to clear out the Legions so that the smaller players can get more playable spawns.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23 Apr 2011 at 06:05
The "problem"  (not really sure it is a problem) is that you can use significant overkill on smaller spawns and thereby reduce your army losses substantially.

With a legion (even those of the wild dogs or spiders that Boromir likes so much) it's much harder to get the same amount of overkill and thus low enough troop losses to make it worth while regardless of the stats about what your returns might be.

SC - for that reason alone I'm willing to bet several beers that the number or instances of legions bearing massive fruit are dwarfed by those of small attacks giving large returns per unit lost.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23 Apr 2011 at 08:36
I can say whole heartedly that I understand none of that, being rubbish at math(sTongue).
I'll leave that stuff to you.....
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Durham View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 Apr 2011 at 15:15
Do armies returning home with animal parts at midday on 11th May get counted?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 May 2011 at 09:12
Originally posted by Durham Durham wrote:

Do armies returning home with animal parts at midday on 11th May get counted?

Hi Durham,

No - it's what is in your inventory at the stroke of midday.  Drops in motion won't be counted.

Regards,

SC
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 May 2011 at 09:25
Hi all,

There's been quite a lot of comment, Petitions etc regarding the use of diplomatic units to "lock down" spawn sites.

This tactic takes advantage of the fact that an NPC node does not re-spawn if there are units incoming to it, and so a player can "force" an NPC node to remain of a certain type/number.

How this tactic works
  • Identify a major competitor for a particular tournament category
  • Look at the spawn sites around this competitors' cities
  • Wait until a very large spawn appears (Horde/Legion etc)
  • Send a single scout (or slowest diplo unit) to that spawn square
  • When those diplo units arrive, send another one - thereby stopping that node from changing to something the player is likely to want to attack

We feel absolutely 100% that this is not an exploit, for the following reasons:

  • It's a clever, legitimate use of an ingame mechanic to hamper a competitor's tournament progress
  • It's available to everyone with minimal technology or building requirements, and rewards people who put time and effort into deploying this tactic, rather than simply having yet-another-tournament where the biggest armies win by default.  This tactic substantially levels the playing field between big alliances and small individuals.
  • It introduces some non-violent PvP elements to a largely PvE tournament.
  • Whilst it may be slightly underhand and sneaky, I suspect most tournament participants would prefer this tactic to be the one in use rather than (eg) another perfectly legitimate tactic to hamper a competitor that might involve Siege Engines.
Regards,

SC
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02 May 2011 at 09:59
SC, may I commend you on your explanations in this forum. The last thing we need in this game is more rules to combat simply clever strategies i.e the diplo tactic, and also I don't think the higher end players need any more advantages in regards to the attack/reward averages. Keep on keeping on, the more time you put in, the more you advance.
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