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Secret Society of Thieves

Printed From: Illyriad
Category: The World
Forum Name: Alliance Recruitment
Forum Description: If you run an alliance and need members, or if you want to join an alliance on the Elgea Continent, post here.
URL: http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/forum_posts.asp?TID=3400
Printed Date: 17 Apr 2022 at 23:21
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Topic: Secret Society of Thieves
Posted By: Grim Sharpaxe
Subject: Secret Society of Thieves
Date Posted: 06 Apr 2012 at 09:21
It seems to me that the thief units in Illy are not being used to their true potential. I have an idea where a 'secret society of thieves' could be set up and some fun had targetting the bigger alliances.
Obviously, setting up a normal alliance for this would not work as anonymity has to be total.
In fact anybody taking part would need to remain anonymous to eachother. All communication would have to be outside of normal Illy channels so there would be no sharing of resources etc. To make this work would mean dedicating an account purely to thieving.
Anyone interested can contact me through:

thiefofilly@gmail.com

I would suggest setting up an email account purely for this so that no personal information is shared or reply through this forum ONLY if your in-game name is different to your forum name.



Replies:
Posted By: scaramouche
Date Posted: 06 Apr 2012 at 09:40
lol..if  I start noticing a bigger increase in diplo attacks in the near future...I know where to come looking.


Posted By: Grim Sharpaxe
Date Posted: 06 Apr 2012 at 09:48
Will definitely be a case of 'catch me if you can'. Wink


Posted By: Nokigon
Date Posted: 06 Apr 2012 at 09:56
Please hit me with thieves. Please. Please please please please please. It'd make my day.


Posted By: SunStorm
Date Posted: 06 Apr 2012 at 18:30
LoL - many bigger players are prepared for thieves. 

What would be interesting is to see an alliance of thieves and other such diplomats that is contracted by other alliances (through large payment of gold) to target enemy alliances and cripple them during times of war.  These alliances would have no armies of their own, but would then hire (through large amounts of gold) other alliances to enter into a NAP/Confed to defend them. 

Not sure how it would work, but I have yet to see an entire alliance that uses diplomats on a grand scale.

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"Side? I am on nobody's side because nobody is on my side" ~LoTR



Posted By: Grim Sharpaxe
Date Posted: 06 Apr 2012 at 18:53
I understand the bigger alliances will be well prepared to defend against a large group of thieves but to what extent does this preparation extend?
Let's say I have 10 cities; 9 of these cities have absolutely no troops or diplomats but are just feeding gold into my other city. I'm wondering if they would be able to defend against the amount of thieves that i would be able to send out from this one city.
Seeing as you are unable to reinforce your own cities with thief units I think i might have a slight advantage


Posted By: SunStorm
Date Posted: 06 Apr 2012 at 18:55
Well, I believe I have heard rumors of someone possessing 35k T2 thieves in one city....

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"Side? I am on nobody's side because nobody is on my side" ~LoTR



Posted By: Rill
Date Posted: 06 Apr 2012 at 19:36
Anon, when you send any diplomatic mission there is a small probability of catastrophic failure.  Even if the mission is completely unopposed or isn't even headed to a place where defense is possible, some missions fail.  I don't know the percentage; some say 1 in 100, but in my limited experience I think it's a bit higher than that.

If you are sending out 20k to 50k thieves at a time, that small chance of catastrophic mission failure translates into a giant loss of units.  It takes a LONG time to make that many thieves, even with substantial sovereignty.

For this reason most "accomplished" thieves tend to split their attacks into smaller groups and therefore must attack less well-defended targets.

In addition, most large alliances and experienced players have methods of tracking attacking diplomats back to their home base.  I can only speak for my alliance, but we are successful in identifying the attacker at least 50% of the time for single attacks and virtually all the time if attacks are repeated.  If you do this to a large player or alliance, the consequences can be dire.  Most players who have alliances don't want to put their alliance in jeopardy by doing this; most players who are not in alliances have a sense of self-preservation that would also prevent them from doing so.

I'm not saying that thieving from large players can't be feasible, just that there are complexities that you may not have considered.  We are seeing more large-scale thieving than we had previously, but I think that the factors that I have outlined will limit the scope of such activity.


Posted By: Nokigon
Date Posted: 06 Apr 2012 at 19:39
And here's the other catch. One, if you have ten cities the odds of catching you are massively higher, two you don't have ten cities because all the ten city players are in big alliances and have gotten ten cities by playing the game reasonably, fairly, in harmony with other players and not by doing stuff like this, and finally three- unless I'm wrong, the odds of you getting a completely successful result are actually lower than you might think. I know plenty of people with a very powerful thief army, and it's only a matter of time before you hit the wrong person and you get caught. Then, in come the cavalry.


Posted By: SugarFree
Date Posted: 06 Apr 2012 at 19:39
that's a scaretactic!

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Nuisance


Posted By: Createure
Date Posted: 06 Apr 2012 at 19:49
So many problems with this idea I won't even begin to list them.

Honestly if you think you can make it work then good luck to you. Personally I would find it pretty enjoyable if someone took it upon themselves to test my ability to defend myself from diplos and track a miscreant down.


Posted By: Grim Sharpaxe
Date Posted: 06 Apr 2012 at 19:53
Some good points there duely noted and taken on board.
I never meant to imply that I have 10 cities at the moment but just speculating for further down the line. Self preservation? I've no doubt that if I go down this road it will come to an end at some point by being caught, but think of the fun had along the way. Wouldn't be the first time I've been sieged out of Illy.
As for the point about playing 'fairly', well the thieves are there for a purpose so don't see where this comes into it.


Posted By: Rill
Date Posted: 06 Apr 2012 at 20:02
think of the fun along the way ...

fun for whom?

I will say that if one is going to use thieves, it seems more "fun" to use them against other players of similar size.  A large player using this many thieves against another very large player might possibly be "fun" for both -- would depend on the other player.  Sounds like Createure is up for it.  Using them against even a medium-sized player ... not so much fun for the victim.


Posted By: Ander
Date Posted: 06 Apr 2012 at 20:07
I wish you goodluck Anon (but please dont attack me Embarrassed)

There are a number of large players with very less thief defense, but as Rill said, if you send 50,000 thieves together, they could still run into a band of 100 thieves and cause an epic failure. The chances for this are probably higher than you think. Thieving becomes profitable* if you split the thieves and attack many targets with smaller numbers (say 2000 or so). But again, that increases the likelihood of getting caught. Expect one in 12-15 thief missions to fail.

Thieves are very expensive to maintain too (4 gold upkeep). Hence people use different strategies for defence against thieves. Some keep all their advanced resources in the same city dedicated to thief defense. Some people (like me) doesn't keep advanced resources at all and buy from market whenever something is required.



*profitable until you are caught


Posted By: Ander
Date Posted: 06 Apr 2012 at 20:14
Originally posted by Rill Rill wrote:

Using them against even a medium-sized player ... not so much fun for the victim.

certainly no fun. I wouldn't like thieves coming to my cities. I don't enjoy spending time tracking diplos across the map. 

We recently had a number of thief attacks in our alliance with more than 12,000 thieves. No concentrated effort was made to track down the thieves. We thought the thief would get bored after some time and stop eventually, since we are not rich enough to hold his attention for long time Big smile


Posted By: Subatoi
Date Posted: 06 Apr 2012 at 20:25
Originally posted by Rill Rill wrote:

think of the fun along the way ...

fun for whom?

I will say that if one is going to use thieves, it seems more "fun" to use them against other players of similar size.  A large player using this many thieves against another very large player might possibly be "fun" for both -- would depend on the other player.  Sounds like Createure is up for it.  Using them against even a medium-sized player ... not so much fun for the victim.

Please let's stop this argument, you can not have fun for everyone. The sooner we all acknowledge this the sooner we can move onto different pastures.

@anon, 

In theory if you gathered enough*positive* attention for this I may be willing to invest some protection your way, if you entered into a few regulations*this would not occur overnight and would be heavily debated amongst my membership*. I can see the importance for having a grouping dedicated to diplomatic armies, but it would only be worthwhile if my alliance wasn't being threatened every step of the way because you couldn't set player targets and non targets.




Posted By: Rill
Date Posted: 06 Apr 2012 at 20:28
It is indeed possible for everyone, with the possible exception of the fortunately small number of people who can only have fun by trying to spoil other people's fun.  One doesn't have to "win" to have fun, for example.  One also doesn't have to create situations in which there is a "winner" or a "loser" if that is not something that one finds fun.


Posted By: Kumomoto
Date Posted: 06 Apr 2012 at 20:59
Originally posted by Ander Ander wrote:

Originally posted by Rill Rill wrote:

Using them against even a medium-sized player ... not so much fun for the victim.

certainly no fun. I wouldn't like thieves coming to my cities. I don't enjoy spending time tracking diplos across the map.


True, Ander, but it is totally worth it in this scenario... Just think of the fun of getting to blow up ten cities... ;)

(I simply can't see someone investing their time for a year or more to build up 10 cities on such a risky endeavor...) Interesting idea, though!




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