Leader/Wizard deaths

[Lord Thanatos]

So a Warlord has 10% of the group casualty rate chance for death.  If a group has 100% casualties, there is only a 10% chance of a Warlord dying?  Further modified down if the kingdom has more hearty leaders?  Am I understanding this correctly?

BTW:  I am truly tired of the new Unusual Encounter casualties . . .

The combination of leaders/wizards dying in combat with pcs and leaders/wizards dying in Unusual Encounters has meant that recently I am losing more kingdom strength to the environment than I am to my opponents great play.  This is definitely not fun!

[Ry Vor]

If a group is eliminated, its leaders and wizards are eliminated, unless they are protected by magic.

If a group suffers 40% casualties, and has a Warlord, the Warlord has a 4% chance of dying, ignoring magic either for or against the Warlord.
That is for group vs. group or group vs. PC battles.  Unusual Sightings are resolved differently and are more dangerous as the encounter is essentially just the leaders and wizards against the guardian.  I believe guidelines were posted earlier, but even an encounter listed as "easy" presently means the patrol should have at least 30 points of patrol points.  So, for example, two Captains alone will likely fail and die.  Two generals and a P2 involved with order #139 would have a good chance.

[Lord Thanatos]

If a group is eliminated, its leaders and wizards are eliminated, unless they are protected by magic.

If a group suffers 40% casualties, and has a Warlord, the Warlord has a 4% chance of dying, ignoring magic either for or against the Warlord.
That is for group vs. group or group vs. PC battles.  Unusual Sightings are resolved differently and are more dangerous as the encounter is essentially just the leaders and wizards against the guardian.  I believe guidelines were posted earlier, but even an encounter listed as "easy" presently means the patrol should have at least 30 points of patrol points.  So, for example, two Captains alone will likely fail and die.  Two generals and a P2 involved with order #139 would have a good chance.

Thanks for the clarifications . . .

I know combat results are much different than they were before, as well.  Had I known all the changes/improvements from game 300 were going to be imported into all the other games I definitely would have signed up to learn those nuances.  Instead, I find myself making decisions based upon a newly flawed understanding of game mechanics.  I can understand when opponents out-maneuver me; it is more difficult for me to countenance that things no longer work they way I expect them to.

I will have to look and find the encounter guidelines.

But why do we need to make it so difficult for players to retrieve items from an encounter?  I understand this makes sense from a role-playing perspective.  But I do not think it makes sense in a contest where we are trying to defeat opponents and take their territory/resources.  In one game my group possesses the Key of the Gem and has discovered the location of the Gem of the Planes.  Because I, a relatively active Forum reader, did not know what was necessary to be successful I have lost, across two separate attempts, a P5, P2, General and two or three Captains.  As important, I spent: one turn divining the location of the artifact, one turn teleporting there, and two turns attempting to retrieve the item.  [In another contest I have exactly zero leaders remaining having lost them all to unusual encounters.  I was successful at an easy encounter, ignored a hard encounter, and failed at both of the medium encounters I located.  I spent all that effort locating the unusual encounters but cannot actually acquire the artifacts because I am not a military kingdom.]

So, my opponents have done nothing to deprive me of a P5, P2, General and two Captains.  But each of them benefit from my losses.  Additionally, I have wasted 8 or 9 orders over 4 turns with nothing to show for it.  Again, my opponents have done nothing to deprive me of these resources but each of them benefit from my expenditures.  In the other game I have zero leaders remaining and my opponents are not responsible for my losing a single one of them.  In previous games I would be the proud possessor of four artifacts and all my leaders would have been trained due to the four successful encounters.  Which result do the players really prefer????

What am I trying to say (kindly, I hope) is that I much prefer an opponent to teleport in invisibly and wipe out my group than to lose that same group simply trying to interact with the world environment.  If an opponent slays a wizard/adept with an agent or opposing wizard that is much preferable to me than to lose that same wizard/adept attacking a neutral pc.  I would rather have to run through three walls of fire than have to fight a group to group battle with no leaders simply because my opponent intercepted my group a turn after I failed at an unusual sighting.

I am frustrated . . . not angry.  Please read this post as sharing my confusion!  I am a loyal customer and cannot believe that I am the only player confused and frustrated over a number of the recent changes.  [The first time I am actually eliminated from a contest I am certain the next post will contain anger - this one does not.]  Sigh!!!

[Diamond Cutter]

Encounters do seem pretty tough.

[HeadHoncho]

First-off, I want to thank Rick for adjusting the battle death formulae. I really appreciate him listening to feedback and taking action! I am totally fine with less frequent promotions, so long as my guys stop dropping like flies. I would like to pose a question as to whether this will result in more leader deaths than before the prior change, simply because the general consensus was that it was too easy to have three Warlord groups running around, but it's really just curiosity.

As for unusual encounters, I'm OK with them being harder, so long as the details of exactly how hard they are, are made widely known. Might even be worth describing in the final Commands document, when Second Cycle gets locked in.

It does seem to create a different "feel" for the game, to have palantirs and rings of protection "in the wild" along with harder encounters... the end result will be fewer artifacts in the hands of Kingdoms, and encounters persisting well into the mid- and late- game. This is not a critique, just an observation.

[Ry Vor]

Sorry for the frustration, LT, but we think we now have things pretty much the way they should be.  Let me explain.

A little background first.  It took me over two years to create Alamaze.  When Phil got it in North Carolina, he was convinced to change it from Symphony to Clipper, with the main advocate of that move (not Cipher) indicating it would take "a couple weeks".  About six months later, the proponent of that conversion had not completed his objective of just documenting everything in the original Alamaze program.  By the time the conversion was done, around a year after starting, Phil had lost 500 of the 1000 player positions he got when first taking over Alamaze.

Various other changes, mainly to values occurred in North Carolina that when beginning the Resurgence I felt had to be undone.  That along with a general makeover.  The original classic map had been unchanged for 25 years.  The results were in plain text.  Instead of a brigade of Red Dragons being about 20 dragons, they had become 700 archers, 600 cavalry, 700 infantry.  Some kingdoms like the Elves and Dwarves had been neutered, others like the Giants made indomitable and great at nearly all aspects.  The things that were not working right in Symphony, like the code doing ESO, SVC, Victory checks, etc, were still not working in Clipper 25 years later.    When we got to about 20 games going at a time around the beginning of 2014 in the Resurgence, just daily processing was taking up to 11 hours a day.  We were at human capacity and couldn't reach out to attract more players and had no time for development.  During this time, Cipher, now relieved of daily processing worked on a number of enhancements to that end.  Shortly before the move to java, he had reduced the processing time for games that did not encounter a code issue by about 80%.  Along the way he of course also introduced the PDF results instead of text, and we had chipped away at almost all the weaknesses including automating ESO and SVC, and we introduced all the game style variants players are familiar with and went to the Resurgent map.  We also had reduced the cost of Alamaze from about $7.50 a turn to about $2 at Warrior and above.

When Uncle Mike came along, he developed the java Alamaze code while we were continuing in Clipper.  In quite a short period, remarkably short, he was able to get a working demo which was game #300 going.  Then he was able to convert existing games over to the new java platform.  My problem initially with Clipper is I did not have much visibility into the values in play, although I eventually through 2014 learned how to get many of them, but still not visibility into the Clipper code (as I don't know Clipper).  Then with java, the database visibility I had with Clipper I do not have, at least I don't as of yet.  While Mike and Cipher worked together to try to make the transition seemless, Mike doesn't really speak fluent Clipper, and Cipher ditto with java. 

So assigning the correct values in combat and the code to resolve battles was the thing that stuck out in the conversion.  It was why I decided to suspend the games for a week so the three of us could focus on synching up combat, such that results would generate much as players had expected, although some changes were made to what were values in Clipper, as well.  For example, the Giants were fighting significantly better than the Red Dragons, which, without regard to terrain, was not how it should have been.  Whereas before in Clipper 3 GI brigades would defeat 3 RD brigades with 1 RD brigade lost before retreat, now the result is as I intended, such that if that battle occurs in the plains, typically the RD will win with 1 GI brigade lost and no RD lost.

Every kind of battle, group vs. group, group vs. PC, naval battles and unusual encounters has been examined, and adjustments made.  This in only the third day of processing since we returned after taking that one week off (where all players were not charged for that week).  So why there may have been some frustration before that sabbatical with battles, we believe as of today everything should be operating as intended.

As for unusual encounter battles, a guardian might have a value of from (say) 35 - 100.  That's how it was in Clipper as well.  The patrol has a value as you would expect for leaders, with a Captain worth 5, a Warlord 25, etc.  Wizards values depend on Power and Kingdom, so that a Warlock P3 contributes 30 if fully engaged, or 15 if guarded attack, while a Dwarven P3 contributes 18 or 9 if guarded.  "The men" contribute as per the toughness of the kingdom, so Ranger men might contribute 20, while Gnomes might be 10.  Weapon artifacts increase chances by 25 points.  A calculation is made as Patrol Strength / Guardian Strength to derive a % chance of success.  That is modified by tactic, such that a Tactic 1 gives -25% to the chance of success and -25% to the chance of the leader or wizard dying, whereas a Tactic 3 gives +25% chance to success but also to the chance of death.  There's more to it than that, including kingdom modifications for leader death, promotion, and emergence.  I can't explain everything about how Alamaze works - again, that guy that thought it would take two weeks to reprogram that gave up documenting after six months found out how involved virtually every outcome resolution is in Alamaze.

Long story short, forget the battles of the last six weeks or so and focus on what happens from this point forward, please.  Another reminder to all that the Commands were updated last week and you should review.

[Diamond Cutter]

Cool stuff!

[Madmardigan]

Thanks guys for all the attention and effort put forth.