An update/patch to the commander Defy Death skill (Military skill tree).

We've recently received reports that the commander skill Defy Death works erratically, and/or over/under-enthusiastically, in bursts.

Commanders with a Level 10 Defy Death should only survive 10% of the time, however (anecdotally) we've been told that in most battles, when one commander belonging to a player army dies, most all of them die; when one commander survives in the same player army, most all of them survive.

We looked at the historical logs, and this anecdote proves true.

This was a code issue that has been in place since commanders were introduced to the game back in 2010 and has affected all players, attackers or defenders, with equal likelihood, in every combat.

Having delved into the codentrails, and after extensive consultation with the Norse God of Mischief, I've determined that the error was in the RNG (Random Number Generator), which wasn't providing as random a number as we would have expected.  If that's not oxymoronic.

Therefore, I've rewritten the RNG and deployed it to live, and it is now truly random - or at least as random as any logic-based computorial system can be.  Please feel free to reply with any ramblings you may have about pseudo-RNGs, chaos theory, ordered systems and/or the Second Law of Thermodynamics below.

The (few) other systems that depend on RNG (such as diplomatic chances, theft etc) were unaffected by this bug; and continue as before.

Also, during the investigation, it appears that commanders were *much* more likely to survive, with a likelihood getting close to 50% in certain circumstances.  Of course, the stated aim of Defy Death is a 1% chance per level, up to a maximum of 10% at Level 10, and this is now in place and working as it should; so please do expect a more realistic 1-in-10 chance of surviving at L10 Defy Death.

We're actively monitoring the new RNG and the diceroll outcomes it provides at a statistically significant level, and it appears to be working as it should, now. As things stand (the new RNG has been running for a few days) we have data from 11,817 commander Defy Death rolls, and 1,138 of them are <= 10%, which seems statistically significantly likely that things are now working as intended.

tldr; The random number generator for deciding whether military commanders should Defy Death or not was a bit broken, and has been weird ever since commanders were introduced to the game.  This has now been fixed, and commanders should now Defy Death in keeping with the expected 1% per level of the Defy Death skill, at an individual level of granularity.

Best wishes,

SC

Nope, sorry.  

The Defy Death skill now does what it said it would do, rather than what it accidentally did back in the day :)

Best,

SC

 

Maybe just a 0.5%-1% chance of survival per level would just be a better thing to do rather than have Defy Death as a skill?

The ability to send wave upon wave of undying commanders that properly equipped are equivalent to approx 1k troops per was a severe imbalance.  At least now you are forced to resurrect and lose commander equipment.

I think that Morose has encapsulated it entirely, above.  

The first thing is to fix the skill (ie get it to do what it says on the tin), but I'm more than happy to entertain suggestions as to how it could be changed (or, indeed, how other things could be changed to make commander level more directly relevant to combat prowess - for example, commander damage multipliers by level).  There are lots of options open to us; but I can say with certainty that practically unkill-able commanders wasn't part of the Illy masterplan.

Clearly there's a balance question, and we all need to be careful with meddling with powers we don't fully understand whilst pouring oil on the troubled waters inside the Pandora's Box on top of the upset applecart that rampages through the proverbial china shop.

Sensible suggestions for commander changes are more than welcome, but not if they're tending back towards the 'immortal death machine' end of the spectrum.  

Best,

SC

Agreed.  

This is a report before the patch went live. As you will see from the second image, these commanders are high level. Each have defy death maxed, yet none of them lived. I would have though at least one of these would have survived based on the mechanic as it was at that time, and having bonuses for high level commanders is a very good idea. 

Its a risk v reward for the commanders, if they are more overpowered as they get to higher levels, the down side is, if they die, they take a very long time to revive. Basically if you get a level 200 commander and you give him a bonus of double division % bonus, you will want to look after it because if it dies, its going to take over a week to revive. Everything has a tradeoff and as a player you have to take a risk in which tradeoff path you will go down. 

At such a high level I would rather wait on a 2-5 day march than a 200 hr respawn and it would be somewhat more similar to what would really happen if a soldier survived the battle.  

Bad part is against sieges you would still end up in a lot of very rapid elite attacks.  So perhaps rather than a slow walk back there would be a paused walk back.  Say place an encampment on a neighboring square for 1 hr before the walk back begins this would also give the option of killing the commander through another battle.  

No idea how hard it would be to code these things though. 

I suppose that if you play a game long enough, you eventually get to play all roles available. To date I have never attacked the devs but here goes.

Defy death worked in a particular way. It may not have been the way intended but it had worked that way for 8 years. Wars had been won or lost on these mechanics. Strategies had been developed on these mechanics. It was the same for everyone. The 10% survival rate is not worth the 10 hours revival time - for me to reset my live commanders will cost me 1350 prestige - no thanks!

In the middle of a war, at the behest of The SINdicate, the devs have altered the dynamics to reduce the effectiveness of elite attacks against big sieging armies without consulting the game at large. Its effect, if not its intent, favours one side. It stinks.

Another thing in the game which is not as intended is the level of bare faced trolling that goes on - from the game rules: posts with the intent to provoke or disrupt other players aka "trolling" are not allowed. Over the past few months, I have been taunted, called names, had sexual innuendos made against me and generally trolled at an industrial level that goes way beyond fair comment or analysis of my game tactics and the devs only response is to suggest I block these people in GC, so I cannot see myself being trolled but everyone else can.

Double sigh!

On behalf of the colonist empire I would like to respond to the disturbing revelations made in today's forum post by Hucbold. No player, regardless of gender, should suffer sexual innuendo to the point of feeling harassed. I hope that the entire community comes together to prevent such a tragic event from occurring again. #huctoo

In any game, basing strategy on game bugs is considered exploiting and bad form.  I understand the frustration of something being broken for so long, but like any exploit it WILL get fixed eventually.  No matter what side you may be on, the ability to send wave after wave of commanders that never die and are as powerful as a thousand troops each is downright game breaking.

A town under siege could send 5 commanders and 240-750 troops every 25 minutes against a siege over and over and over again.  Those troops would hit 10 times over their power level, thereby giving the defending player tens of thousands of essentially free troops.  The fact that this is even an outrage that it is fixed is mind boggling.

You can read what the description says.  You know what it is supposed to do.  Even if it didn't work that way, you chose to exploit a bug for your own gain.

I'd like to take a moment to address this.  

If we ever see any form of harassment or receive reports of harassment, we take the offenses and accusations very seriously and will investigate and dole out punishment as necessary.  As a rule, we do not discuss said punishment with anyone but the offender.  We also make recommendations to the person being harassed that they block the person harassing them, it is the entire reason the block function exists.  If someone is harassing you or saying something you find offensive your first step should be to block them, and then send us a report about the offender so that we can investigate the allegation.

I'd like to point everyone to this thread:  https://forum.illyriad.co.uk/chat-and-community-enforcement-information_topic10398.html " rel="nofollow - https://forum.illyriad.co.uk/chat-and-community-enforcement-information_topic10398.html  ; Which covers our enforcement policy.  Namely: No one on the GM staff will discuss publicly, or with individuals in private, the reasons for moderation, silencing or the status of suspended accounts with anyone other than the account holder themselves. 

Simple is good.  

Of course, some of us math-inclined types enjoy a good expression with numerous variables.  As the blue GM mentioned earlier there needs to be a boundary (or asymptote) to avoid creating an indestructible commander.  For each level of Defy Death (currently 1%) can be raised to 5% per level through other bonuses, a number were mentioned in this thread (scroll up, ignore excessive textual sighing).

Potential bonuses to increase Defy Death:

Good luck!

The ironic thing about your claim here is that you are trying to play the victim when you are the instigator, over the past few months, I myself have been labelled, Nazi, Terrorist, and the latest one from you yourseld applied to TCOL, ethinic cleansers. You want to come on here and cry foul when you are the one that started it all in this very forum for it, even asked by GM Cerb to stop. This supposed level of trolling is a creature you can call your own, as I have been harassed with those labels above myself since the very start of this war and you were the one that started it (check the numerous forum posts of your own for reference), im not going to cry about as you do, I  just fight back.  

As such you still have one of your towns named after one of the worst ethnic cleansing events that has ever occurred, maybe you should reflect on your own actions before hurling accusations at others. 

You could make a case that having 20 dead commanders at level 25 ready to go within an hour is playing the system. Not that I think that should go away, I think there needs to be more incentive to have high level commanders.

Ossian, this thread was a discussion of the fixed exploit regarding Defy Death.  Hucbold then derided SIN, blaming them for influencing the GM to fix a known exploit in the game that he admitted to using as part of their strategy.  The simple fact of the matter is that Defy Death was not working properly.  The period of time it was not working properly does not matter, and using the fact that it was not working as intended is an exploit plain as day.  

I do not see how that wouldn't be construed as his fault, and while he may have a point in the length of time in which this went unfixed, he is absolutely wrong in his assertion that it had some malicious intent to punish him behind it.  

TLDR - Defy Death was broken, now it's fixed, some people are mad that they can no longer exploit the fact that it's broken but it was never labeled to do anything more than it does now so the burden of the consequences are on them.

Wow! Speaking of TROLLING someone. Remember this city, Huc? Seems to me like you are just as guilty.

And for those who have already leveled up Defy Death, should they have to pay for the prestige to undo it?

Assuming level 10 defy death, this is what the graph looks like.

Then your post is off-topic and unnecessary. Open another thread.

206? What did I miss?

9 self bonuses= 90

11 division bonuses=110

Troop specific defence boost=5

=205

Updates to the game are always good.

 

Can we expect to see more fixes, possibly including an improved text editor?

 

 

Accelerated Healing has 11 levels.

He added up all the levels shown on the commander screen.  Accelerated healing shows as 11 levels because you start with one which is not reflected in your commanders level count.  So there are 206 levels but commanders can only show 205.

Would it be a real forum if we didn't tangent off at every opportunity?

The more I think about it the more absurd dragging a siege engine, or 30, up a mountain, then actually making them work becomes. 

Getting it all done in 12 hours its even more outrageous 

I would vote up Ten's proposal for increasing DD value per level. Or introducing some crafted wonder-battle-mare that would carry its' owner out of the battle, enfluencing his defy death rolls severely.

Now I guess it would be groovy to separate hunting and PvP issues apart, maybe by introducing anti-DD skill or anti-DD equipment. Thus NPCs would go on enjoying the power of humanism and big armies will cease being thrashed by small armies.

There are many players believing those do not work properly, but there is no official statement on the matters (I am sorry if there was).

Hunting is one of the first things where Illyriad becomes fun (after upgrading resources) and this unclarity of whether bonuses work or not is not good for game.