Hey Jerry --
I have seen some folks get good luck with Name A40s and Stealth combo, and
others get not so good luck. And as a side comment, I see a lot fewer people
taking stealth on their starting agents with the new 600 point cost compared
to some cheaper options for commanders (C10 being very useful for its price)
and mages (overall cheaper, making having a little mage rank on a character
or two more attractive even for non mage-based nation)
The Challenge Rank and Stealth do NOT increase your chance of a new
character coming in with a bonus, nor do they guarantee that every bonus is of that
type. What they do is, IF a new character gets a bonus, then it is MORE
LIKELY that the bonus will be of that type.
If you take both SNAs, then it is very likely that any bonus will be one or
the other, but you never get both -- so if you are looking for stealth, then
also taking the challenge rank bonus actually decreases your chance of getting
stealth, because sometimes when you might have gotten stealth you would get
a challenge rank bonus instead. (So almost nobody duplicates what the
Woodmen in the old scenarios have, i.e. both -- they take one or the other and
name characters to take advantage of that.) So taking both means almost all
bonuses you got would be one or the other, but pretty much 50/50 as to which for
any given character.
In addition, taking one of these SNAs means that the special bonus on a
random starting character will be of that type. Stealth SNA guarantees one
starting character getting 10 stealth, Challenge Rank SNA guarantees one starting
character getting +15 to challenge rank. Again, if you take both, then 50/50
as to which bonus you get.
The Stealth SNA is really an expensive attempt to get really lucky. If you
name a stealthy agent or two among your first extra characters, that can be
extremely potent, as the characters are immediately able to steal gold for
decent agent rank increases and can get their ranks up quickly and become
killers or whatever. When combined with Name A40s, a common plan is to start with
just one A40 or better, name one new one on turn 1 and two new ones on turn
2, etc. If time and gold is available, one or more A40s that do not come in
with stealth can be retired and new A40s named until you get some decent
stealth. And if you get really lucky and get several agents with stealth,
especially if the stealth is significantly high, you can dominate the agent wars
with agents that always find their targets and never get spotted or scouted out
in return...
The down side is that if you get unlucky, then the SNA doesn't help much at
all. If you get stealth on the rare non-agent you might name (when I take
the SNA I often name C10/A20s if I need commanders, so that if I get stealth it
can be taken advantage of), it feels like a wasted opportunity. If you name
several agents without stealth, the SNA may not only be useless but worse
than useless -- you could end up spending time, orders and gold retiring and
renaming A40s trying to get stealth when by the time you finally do get some
stealth, the first A40s could have been in the 50s or even 60s rank! In the
meantime, not only are you wasting chances to just improve the non-stealthy
agents, using up orders and gold, but you are also probably naming fewer
characters of other types and then later may find that you lack characters that you
need.
However, if you can set up the nation so that it can indeed be primarily an
agent nation, it can be a great combo -- you just need to get lucky early to
make it definitely worthwhile. And you can still get some scouting advantage
-- those two SNAs cost 16k total, leaving 4k. You can take +20 to Scout --
the much maligned (but not as bad as you might think) scouting SNA -- because
if your A40s effectively scout at 60 right away, and as they get better, so
does their scouting ability, then you can often find the targets you want to
find, with the main exception being stealthy enemy agents -- and if your
agent gets stealth, that helps, so between stealth and the +20 you could well
match the ability of some x2 scouts.
Alternatively, especially if Neutral or Evil, you could spend 3k on two
artifacts and have some chance of getting an artifact that helps agent rank or
stealth. (Unlike the FP, the N and DS nations have a significant chance of
getting a non-combat artifact, just a little under half the time based on the
percentage of combat artifacts vs non-combat artifacts of each allegiance.) In
that case you may or may not get something useful (but you can always give
your guys a combat arty or two and keep them safer from surprise challenges)
but you also have another 1k (or more depending on region) nation points to
spend.
The thing is, over time you should get a fair number of characters with
stealth, but because you name so few characters normally -- assuming no losses
(chuckle), 4 on turn 1+, 3 more on turn 6+, 2 more on each of turns 11+, 16+ and
21+, for a total of 13 new characters -- that if say 1 in 3 characters got
a bonus and 75% of those were stealth then you would get 4 characters with
bonuses, 3 of which were stealth. So if you got those 3 guys early, that is
awesome, but it you got them late, not too great. Then it comes down to how
many times you might need to retire and name in order to get someone with
stealth. If 1/3 characters comes in with a bonus and 75% of those bonuses are
stealth, so that on average 1 out of every 4 characters gets stealth, then for
every 4 characters you retire and rename, you should get one guy with stealth.
That can be a lot of orders and gold, and then you may end up with stealth
only in the teens. On the other hand you could retire a couple guys, name
two new guys, and both could come in with stealth in the 30s, and you would
have made excellent use of the SNAs.
As far as that vs double-scouting -- the main thing about double-scouting is
that if one nation has it, the whole side is in much better shape than if
nobody has it, but multiple nations with double-scouting doesn't get you a big
improvement. Stealth, on the other hand, is an SNA that can help an
offensive agent nation take advantage of a scouting nation's agents' info. So if
doing a grudge team, say, you want someone to take A40s and x2 Scout, someone
else to take A40s and Stealth, and (if allowed) one nation to take +20 K/A.
And multiple nations should take some artifacts so you can try to get some
agent or stealth artifacts onto the best killers -- if FP, you may need to more
agressively hunt such artifacts to make up for the general lack of Good
agent/stealth artifacts compared to the other two alignments.
As the FP, by the way, it can also be useful to have a dwarven nation with
Scout/Recon at Rank 50 SNA. Such scouts (often single-ranked commanders,
emissaries or mages) are not very good at scouting for characters -- but they can
do recons/scout areas, scout hex, etc., and often get army commander names
that way, and with scout pop center can also get loyalty info, all of which can
be useful...
-- Ernie III
In a message dated 9/5/2006 5:52:53 PM Eastern Standard Time,
wyndhammer@yahoo.com writes:
Hey Gavin,
Thanks for the input! A question about the agent
based nations...has there been much use of the #5
Stealth Bonus rather than the double scout if 40 pt
agents are also chosen? I have not heard of anyone
taking it and having good or bad to say of the SNA.
Most folks seem to take the 10 pt guarantee at the
nation design stage but leave it at that. I had
thought also what happens in game mechanics when
someone chooses challenge bonus and stealth bonus and
begins naming new characters.
thanks again!
jerry
.
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