Suggestions & Game Enhancements

Refining Theft

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Category: Miscellaneous
Forum Name: Suggestions & Game Enhancements
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URL: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/forum_posts.asp?TID=2776
Printed Date: 17 Apr 2022 at 13:17
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Topic: Refining Theft

Posted By: Albatross
Subject: Refining Theft
Date Posted: 10 Nov 2011 at 11:35

There might be room for tweaking Theft:

Introduce a hidden state of alert that has a half-life of about 2 days from a discovered theft/shortfall. This makes repeated attacks less likely to succeed time after time.
When stocks are low compared with capacity, it should be easier to detect theft, either by discovering the theft in-progress, or by the quartermaster's due diligence.
There's potential to introduce environmental factors. I think it's unfair to international players to do this using day/night cycles, but something could be done with the seasonal cycle (day length) and the lunar cycle (available light at night).
I have to suspend my disbelief when I see that thousands of thieves are less likely to be detected than one or two thieves! In cases of larger numbers of attacking thieves, it's more likely that some will be discovered, and compromise the amount that the remaining thieves can escape with before the city is 'locked-down' and placed on alert.

The above would align the game with reality, and perhaps introduce some fuzzy balancing factor variables into the game, making outcomes less certain. I'm not asking for theft to be made more difficult overall; other sweet-spots would be relaxed a bit to compensate.

Replies:

Posted By: FallenSoul
Date Posted: 13 Nov 2011 at 14:35

Albatross,

You made some very good points there and I would like to comment on a couple.

1. I agree with this, it just simply makes sense that if someone is robbed they are going to be a little paranoid and be on the lookout more.

2. This is the one that I do not agree on. From a real life standpoint if there is a lot of treasure / resources, guards will not be placed to watch over something. However if there is a lot of resources (imagine a treasure room), guards would be posted to keep watch. But I really think this should remained untouched for other reasons. If a player amasses a large amount of resources for theft protection then (according to my idea) it would lead to people stockpiling a little. If they follow your advice then they try to keep resources extremely low and there is a building already made to protect small amounts of resources (the vault).

3. I could see it being easier to steal at night as opposed to during the day. Perhaps a bonus at night and a possible penalty during the day? Or flip flop it as its much easier for a robber to steal from someone's house during the day while they are at work and not so easy when the person is sleeping in their house at night?

4. I personally even thought it rather odd that you get better results with thousands of thieves coming into a town of only a few hundreds of people and not noticing?? A bit far fetched if you ask me.

In your closing remarks though, it looks to me like you _are_ asking for theft to be made more difficult overall, but just trying to do so covertly without alerting people who enjoying thieving to come in here and troll you. You sly dog :)

-FallenSoul

Posted By: Ander
Date Posted: 13 Nov 2011 at 18:20

Thieving and scouting are already very difficult as it is. Even if you use thousands of thieves, you could loose against a small number and your mission may not return. It will take half a month to train 1000 thieves. Loosing a few thousand against a city with small defense is no fun at all.

Thieves are comparatively better than scouts though. The intelligence from a successful scout mission to a city is of very little use. If it is an active city, you could not expect the same units to be standing there when you send an attack. And no matter what the defending unit type is, you will almost always send an army based on the destination terrain.

One would want to know the troops in an inactive city if he is interested in farming/sieging it. One could loose a thousand scouts easily against a small city - i say that because it happened to me twice. In such cases it is better to send a small army directly to test the waters.

But having to send an army for scouting mission reflects how bad the current diplo branch in the game is. It is directly reflected even on the ranking board. - Only 100 people who has more than 10K points. Add to it that a portion of ranks in diplomacy has come by raiding empty cities again and again for diplo points.

It will be more justified if a portion of the attacking diplos would escape and another portion would get captured based of the offense/defense values. The bigger the mission is, greater the chances for success (as it should be) but also greater the losses and the chance for the mission to get identified (as to who sent the mission).

Posted By: Brids17
Date Posted: 13 Nov 2011 at 18:35

Albatross wrote:

I have to suspend my disbelief when I see that thousands of thieves are less likely to be detected than one or two thieves! In cases of larger numbers of attacking thieves, it's more likely that some will be discovered, and compromise the amount that the remaining thieves can escape with before the city is 'locked-down' and placed on alert.

I don't think this could work with the current defense system being to have as many thieves as possible. It would mean you would have to use a lot to succeed at all but then as a result increase the odds of getting detected. I think it would further the theft of new players, due to having little to no thieves and reduce the odds of large players getting stolen from.

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Posted By: Koragg
Date Posted: 16 Nov 2011 at 12:34

Albatross wrote:

There might be room for tweaking Theft:

Introduce a hidden state of alert that has a half-life of about 2 days from a discovered theft/shortfall. This makes repeated attacks less likely to succeed time after time.

Not sure what the point of a half-life would be. (Half-life of 2 days means that the potency of the effect would halve every 2 days, so 50% and 2, 25% and 4, 12.5% at 6 on into infinity)

A flat duration of 2 days makes more sense.

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Koragg, Faction Abassador for Dwarven Druids [Druid]
Phineous, Trade Co-ordinator for Fairy Road Authority [Roads]