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Saromir View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Topic: Diplomatic Unit Detection Boosts
    Posted: 19 Nov 2011 at 12:11
*Ideas:

The title "Diplomatic Unit Detection Boosts" is meant to actually have something of a dual meaning. I believe:

1) Diplomatic Units should be able to detect diplomatic units stationed in and abroad for a town. This role most likely ought to go to [advanced] scouts, as they do this already for Military Units.

2) Diplomatic Units should be logged according to the direction they came from, when they are detected within diplomatic view range of a town.

*Explanation and Support:

1) At the moment, diplomatic units are virtually invisible. You don't know who has them and where they are, much less have any way to intercept them. In an actual example, someone keeps pillaging with several thousand thieves ... an act in itself a wonder. In the first place, you can't defend against something like that. Spells only go to 400, with slight boosts with Tier 2 buildings, and not only can you not usually make that many thieves to defend with, I'd like to see you try supporting them for even a week.

The fact of the matter is, I don't even know where the thieves are coming from. It's random chance if you should catch them in the act and calculate the relative angle they're coming from. I hope this game doesn't assume you're always active, much like a lord on permanent guard duty by himself, for all his towns. Even if you manage to find which town is most likely, there's no way to prove all those thieves are there. They are completely invisible.

2) [Read explanation for 1]. Now why oh why can no one among all my population, guards, military, diplomats, and common folk, tell me which way several thousand thieves were headed? In order for diplomats, or army for that matter, to be visible on the main map, within visible range of the town, some living creature MUST detect them. And if that living creature is able to relay info that there are enemy units incoming, they must also be able to tell which direction they're coming from and going to. An angle in degrees should be enough, the rest can be calculated (which takes work).

Personally I'm vying for both ideas 1 and 2, but I'd be happy with even just 1. Please argue fully for and against. I'm really interested why any non-hostile, non-thieving person would be against this. I can demonstrate how frustrating it can be when dealing with any thieves, if you like ;p .
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 19 Nov 2011 at 18:08
I would like some vector information as it would save some math, but I don't really see how it could be implemented.  It might be a good idea to give a warning message when they come within the visible radius, like "hostile diplomats detected at [coordinates] on [date/time]".

Building such a huge number of thieves takes a big allocation of resources at the detriment of others.  Particularly gold/hr, that is upkeep that cannot go to fielding a large army, for instance.  I see that as valid strategy, no problem there, and there are multiple means of defense; runes, your own thieves, and the vault.  Some combination of the three is helpful, and will diminish the thief's returns...
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 Nov 2011 at 09:23
Yes, that's what I mean. I need some level of logging the diplomats' direction. Even one position might be enough to calculate the angle of incidence.

I see it as a valid strategy as well, but all strategies must have counter-strategies, particularly in a balanced game. As I mentioned, those means of defense are vastly insufficient when dealing with say 5000 thieves.

Runes only cover 400 thieves ... a rather insignificant reduction when dealing with an overkill number like 5000. As you said, it's very resource intensive, and you would need a relatively equivalent force to match that, but by the time you can even start building such a force, they're already gone with a ridiculous number of resources. I don't think the City Wall adds to Diplomat defense, does it?

As for the vault, it has a maximum of protecting 15,901 primary resources and 200 secondary resources. You can imagine that a thief doesn't send 5000 thieves to a small village, especially with support costs being so high, so the target is someone with significant amounts of resources to steal.

Understand, my aim is to kill. The moment I find positive proof of who the thief is, I'd like to see him try it again when I'm done with his towns. At the moment, the game mechanics do not provide enough data to get positive proof in any way, only suggestion. It's never a good idea to wage wars on suggestion.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 Nov 2011 at 10:31
Originally posted by Saromir Saromir wrote:

Yes, that's what I mean. I need some level of logging the diplomats' direction. Even one position might be enough to calculate the angle of incidence.


you can get the angle of incidence by looking at the incoming or outgoing units on the map. If you have foreign offices in your town, you will get a fairly large window in which you can see the units.

Originally posted by Saromir Saromir wrote:


I see it as a valid strategy as well, but all strategies must have counter-strategies, particularly in a balanced game. As I mentioned, those means of defense are vastly insufficient when dealing with say 5000 thieves.

I dont get this. If you have a fairly good number of thieves and good runes, are they not enough to deal with incoming thieves? How is it different from an army of 5000 knights?


Originally posted by Saromir Saromir wrote:


Runes only cover 400 thieves ... a rather insignificant reduction when dealing with an overkill number like 5000. 

Runes could cover 1000 units if you have two Runemasters in your city. Quite a significant reduction, considering that it takes almost 10 days and a lot of advanced resources to build 1000 thieves.

Also, any amount of basic resources or gold stolen cannot be compared to the loss of advanced resources in the form of thieves.

Originally posted by Saromir Saromir wrote:

As you said, it's very resource intensive, and you would need a relatively equivalent force to match that, but by the time you can even start building such a force, they're already gone with a ridiculous number of resources. 


If you see incoming diplos that you suspect to be thieves, you may remove all your advanced resources to another city. The attacker will not gain anything and loose a portion of his thieves.

Originally posted by Saromir Saromir wrote:


Understand, my aim is to kill. 

Build up diplo defense if your aim is to kill. You could kill as well as identify the attacker (and deal with him in whichever way you want)






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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 Nov 2011 at 11:42
Originally posted by Ander Ander wrote:


you can get the angle of incidence by looking at the incoming or outgoing units on the map. If you have foreign offices in your town, you will get a fairly large window in which you can see the units.


Yes, I know. However, sleep, work, school, going out, personal hygiene, or anything having to do living a life tend to drag me away from my staring at my Illyriad pages all day and night long, non-stop.

Originally posted by Ander Ander wrote:


I dont get this. If you have a fairly good number of thieves and good runes, are they not enough to deal with incoming thieves? How is it different from an army of 5000 knights?


I keep an active standing army, and my wall boosts the defense powers of my army, so I have to keep half as many troops to fend off a tremendous force. I don't keep 5000 thieves on standby, nor could I, nor would I. It's simply impractical, and I think anyone practical would agree. I doubt I could support 5000 thieves even for a short time, and can you tell me when exactly those short periods would be? I doubt anyone could considering diplomatic assaults are intended to be random.

Originally posted by Ander Ander wrote:

Runes could cover 1000 units if you have two Runemasters in your city. Quite a significant reduction, considering that it takes almost 10 days and a lot of advanced resources to build 1000 thieves.

Also, any amount of basic resources or gold stolen cannot be compared to the loss of advanced resources in the form of thieves.


Yes, you're right. Then it'll take just 1 or 2 extra trips to clean out my resources, each trip refueling his thieving war machine. Sending cheaper, expendable T1 thieves in advance also saves tons of resources. My resources will range from 1000-3400 p/h less, making it all the more difficult to recover from such a diplomatic assault.

Originally posted by Ander Ander wrote:

If you see incoming diplos that you suspect to be thieves, you may remove all your advanced resources to another city. The attacker will not gain anything and loose a portion of his thieves.


Again, a very big assumption that I'm awake and active at all times (consider time zones as well). Possible, but not usually practical.

Originally posted by Ander Ander wrote:


Build up diplo defense if your aim is to kill. You could kill as well as identify the attacker (and deal with him in whichever way you want)


Huh? Ummmm... How about you assume I've maxed out all Diplomatic research. As I said, keeping many thieves around is impractical. It certainly could help with identifying the attacker. However, I have yet to identify any thief even with interrogation, as well as some thief units (MAXIMUM thieves research and some thieves are necessary for interrogation to work, and it's still only a chance of identification).

In other words, the players that have ANY towns without a high enough Consulate level, without Interrogation, without Advanced Thieves research, AND without some thieves are vulnerable to thieves and have no way to identify the enemy. This is, of course, assuming those players are in an alliance that can handle large aggressors. It still doesn't mean you can stop the thieves in any way either, at least until you have a difficult to reach, high-level Mage Tower.

I also wonder, in order to defend with thieves, and then interrogate enemy units, don't you still have to have thieves after the assault? Don't defending thieves get killed off before they can be of any use toward interrogation (100 defending vs 5000 attacking)?
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 Nov 2011 at 14:47
Originally posted by Saromir Saromir wrote:



Huh? Ummmm... How about you assume I've maxed out all Diplomatic research. As I said, keeping many thieves around is impractical. It certainly could help with identifying the attacker. However, I have yet to identify any thief even with interrogation, as well as some thief units (MAXIMUM thieves research and some thieves are necessary for interrogation to work, and it's still only a chance of identification).

In other words, the players that have ANY towns without a high enough Consulate level, without Interrogation, without Advanced Thieves research, AND without some thieves are vulnerable to thieves and have no way to identify the enemy. This is, of course, assuming those players are in an alliance that can handle large aggressors. It still doesn't mean you can stop the thieves in any way either, at least until you have a difficult to reach, high-level Mage Tower.

I also wonder, in order to defend with thieves, and then interrogate enemy units, don't you still have to have thieves after the assault? Don't defending thieves get killed off before they can be of any use toward interrogation (100 defending vs 5000 attacking)?


T1 thieves are the best for defense, and t2 are only good to keep around for attacking. Specially if your an elf. If you are in an alliance, it would be smart to have a safe town. A town with diplo units that can protect your advance resources. That way when you need to use them you can send them out to the different towns for use. If you are in an alliance and your safe town does get raided, then your alliance will have full right to strike back with everything they have.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 20 Nov 2011 at 17:51
Originally posted by Saromir Saromir wrote:

 
Don't defending thieves get killed off before they can be of any use toward interrogation (100 defending vs 5000 attacking)?

Defending diplos are invincible. 

Whether an enemy mission succeeds or not, you will still have all your thieves standing after the mission. 

On the other hand, if you have 100 thieves against 5000, there is still a small chance (maybe a one in fifty chance) that the enemy mission would fail and your enemy will loose all his 5000 thieves. 






Edited by Ander - 20 Nov 2011 at 17:52
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21 Nov 2011 at 03:22
Originally posted by Saromir Saromir wrote:

Understand, my aim is to kill. The moment I find positive proof of who the thief is, I'd like to see him try it again when I'm done with his towns. At the moment, the game mechanics do not provide enough data to get positive proof in any way, only suggestion. It's never a good idea to wage wars on suggestion.
I'm sympathetic, being the victim of many thieving raids myself.

But I don't know to what end the things you suggest will help.  Even if you can track thieves back to the source (which your suggestion aids), that is not positive proof -- you don't have any report or other concrete data you can show anyone else.  You can try taking screenshots, which I have done, but do you know how easily I can falsifiy screenshots to implicate someone?

There is a nonzero chance that even with a small defensive force of thieves you will successfully interrogate an attacking force.  If you add the 400 (or more with runemaster's grounding) killed by runes and any resources spared by a vault, it can be a dangerous proposition to thieve from any sufficiently large town.  My point is that an army of thieves that big eats into the possible size of a defending military so getting caught can be extremely dangerous (as you intimate).  In addition, almost every player has runes up; thieving players expect to lose a few hundred thieves, and considering typically T2 thieves are used for attack, that's one horse, two books, and one saddle for each one.  Not an insignificant loss.

So, I feel the balance is just about right here, in terms to costs to maintain a lager number of offensive thieves and dangers of deploying them.  Though I do think some kind of system message when incoming hostile diplos are spotted is a good idea.  Just something like "hostile diplomats detected at [coords] heading for [city name]!"  This could open up other strategies such as sending out "scouting parties" of diplos beyond a city's warning radius when expecting attack.


Edited by Cuddlefuzz - 21 Nov 2011 at 03:28
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21 Nov 2011 at 04:03
Originally posted by Cuddlefuzz Cuddlefuzz wrote:

Though I do think some kind of system message when incoming hostile diplos are spotted is a good idea.  Just something like "hostile diplomats detected at [coords] heading for [city name]!"  This could open up other strategies such as sending out "scouting parties" of diplos beyond a city's warning radius when expecting attack.


I'd like to point you to this link here: http://www.illyriad.co.uk/blog/index.php/2011/11/sound-enhancing-the-illyriad-experience-with-audio/

"We also plan to have some generic musical motifs and themes that enhance the game experience, such as triumphal themes that linger after you win a battle or trepidation themes that build anticipation before a diplomatic event such as sabotage or assassination."

If you are in an alliance, then hardly no one will raid you. So having a safe town that has just thief units in it will protect you most of the time. When someone does raid you, even if you do not have troops, you find out who it is. Then that gives your alliance full right to attack that player. So even if your stuff does get taken, you will most likely get it back. But like you said, diplo attacks are more common cause there is a less chance of getting found out. So having one safe town with about 10-15k thieves is best.  You can have one safe town with about 15k thieves and still have anywhere from 100k-130k troops in your other 8 cities, if you do your taxes right. That might not be alot, but with an alliance that is a great amount to have. (well that is if you are on plains, which is hard to defend).

You just really got to see it from the other end. You should not know 100% of the time where the diplo units come from. That would unbalance the game and make diplo units almost useless.


Edited by Quackers - 21 Nov 2011 at 04:11
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 21 Nov 2011 at 06:31
Originally posted by Quackers Quackers wrote:

 You just really got to see it from the other end. You should not know 100% of the time where the diplo units come from. That would unbalance the game and make diplo units almost useless.

I think we're on the same page here.

The only issue I see is that if you want to know the vector of a diplo attack you have to be logged in within an hour or two of the attack.  This is an issue for players who aren't on 24/7, so a system message would be nice.  Otherwise, I think the game mechanisms are pretty sound.
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