Seen means “it’s possible”. I never said it wasn’t. But if you’re going to open a factory, you would need a better business plan. I’ve “seen” more than dozens. Seeing is believing, salt dice free. And when I said “done it”, I meant, in simple English, that I’ve “done it”. On more than one occasion. Lots of nations have a multi skill with 10 emis. Name. Next turn he names and moves, next turn the 2nd names to replace the first who just died in challenge, and moves, etc, repeat. Keep 2 slots open and pump up your pal. “Seen” dozens of times. “Done it” as an assembly line tactic twice. Old wives tale. Funny.
But you are obviously thinking along the correct lines. There are many different and innovative ways to “use” the extra funding for the DS. They don’t actually need much to “close the gap”. The original gap is created by their obvious and desperate need. Satisfy the need, and now you’re getting into luxury spending. You don’t have to look around too far in the Real World to determine that the more luxury spending available, the zanier and wackier lengths people will go to be “innovative”… It’s just that this particular “scheme” isn’t worth the time/effort and will get very boring very fast.
I still can only shake heads about those to whom the term “the DS have heaps of gold” alone is not enough to demonstrate the imbalance…
gee what can you do with all that gold??? :rolleyes:
just think that the DS can improve any population center they like, just think all MTs in mordor become cities before turn 10, just think some DS armies are fed or even armored because the DS don’t have to sell every scrap of resource… see - thinking isn’t that hard
PS you can buy everything in this game, except good SNAs, characters and artefacts… what, the DS already have good SNAs, characters and artefacts? oh that’s a bonus
I can envision any number of ways where doing this could be wasteful…like naming E10’s to challenge Murazor etc. where the skill gain is minor.
I am merely disagreeing with claim that you don’t gain much skill when you have a very high probability of winning the challenge…and would suggest that your data observations is contaminated by examples where very high ranked characters didn’t gain much skill.
I personally feel this strategy is better >turn 10 especially for nations that don’t need more characters that badly (ie. Cardolan types) and can’t name A40’s, E40’s etc. they could contribute by churning out E10, A10 types to rapidly boost teamate’s newer characters…mainly agents towards killing status.
I don’t know why you insist on arguing everything a 15 year veteran of who knows how many games who actually has DONE this says.
An e10 has a 5 point challenge. A 30 point agent has a 22 point challenge. The ratio is 4:1. At this ratio, you will gain precious few skill points. If you have a data set of over 100 examples that shows a Mean skill increase of 3 or more, then please publish it, else, accept that when I say I’ve SEEN THIS AND DONE THIS I have. And off the top of my head (contaminated data set, I guess you could say…), I recall 2 instances in well over 20 where the skill increase was 2. I’ve NEVER seen skill increases of e10s challenging m30’s greater than 2. I have seen Kadida and Gontran kill Nazgul on turn 2 also. Take the storys and lies told by addled old minds and do as you will.
On other topics, I must on a philosophical basis, argue the concept of a nation “not needing” extra characters. When I ran the e10 challenge gambit, I had the one nation keep 2 slots open. Max characters, 2 of which were reserved for this ongoing rotation of suicide for the greater good. Now, you won’t believe my experience that this is, all in all, a waste of time, great, but I DO implore you to be more exact in that when you say a nation “doesn’t need characters” you really mean a “safe nation who can afford the cost of such a gambit” and clarify that Max Characters are a default best-case regardless of nation…?
If you had just come out and clearly said that you’d tried a similar tactic in the past and for some reason skill gains were minimal…and then said you were GUESSING as to why…then it would have been easier to understand.
But no, you provided a “formula” that is obviously wrong…then changed to a new “formula” when questioned about it and got cranky with me for not blindly lapping up what you’d served me. (I’m suspicious after seeing a lot of bad information floating around…like how hard\easy it is to steal etc.)
As for “extra characters”…there can be times where say…Cardolan might be helping the team more by challenge boosting some agents with their 16th and 17th slots than naming another C30 or E30 etc. late in the game. (Assuming they could indeed boost their skill a bit)
Lastly, I wrote a simulation for challenge calculations so I’m fully educated on that topic.
What formula are you talking about?? I never provided a formula brother. I do believe I provided a fraction - 95/100. That’s a 1/20 chance of failure, you know, like 19 times out of 20…? If you don’t immediately recognize this as an old wives tale inherent in every “algorithm” in the program, than you don’t have a clue what your talking about. If you think 19/20 represents a “formula”, than I would looooooove to see your “simulation”. Have a nice day dude, all the best.
Now you are just talking gibberish. You’ve presented two completely different explanations as to how the skill gain from challenge formula works.
The higher the chance of success the lower the skill gain. (which is obviously wrong)
The Ratio of the challenge skills affects kill gain.
I work with math for a living so stop blowing smoke and move along it’s obvious that you never make mistakes or miscommunicate so I’ll never get a straight response from you.:mad:
First off, the Ratio (2:1, etc) is directly proportional to the chance of success, so for a philosophical discussion they are one and the same. Thus, frankly, in English and maybe not Math, you are correct in that I have not made a mistake.
Second, it is obviously right. The greater the discrepancy between challenge ranks the lower the skill rank increase when the better challenger wins. I have oodles of evidence for this from playing MEPBM, not doing math as a hobby or reading the rule book. In Game Experience. Don’t knock it until you try it AD.
Well, somehow we got into the AnotherDarrell vs. VEO show here on this thread… The funny part of it is that you guys are both saying that there are cool ways for the DS to use the extra money that results from the banker nation exploit, and then somehow you got into a personal argument on how many angels are dancing on the head of the Personal Challenge pin…
Anyway, back to point: the banker exploit does work. As it becomes more commonly used (and sorry Terry, the first time I used it was in PoWeR16 and that was a non grudge game and we, the DS, were all convinced to use it and did so on turn1. IK and DragL and everyone… no complaints either. It’s huge) we will start to begin to gather statistics to support whether or not it is destabilizing.
The concern that I have is that if the player base believes it to be destabilizing (and you can count me in the column that believes it is) then that might impact the ability to get people to play FP and/or the game in general…
I’ve not seen any difference in players joining as FP vs DS with the advent of the information from my collation of game end (ie that it was “common knowledge” that DS won more than FP in normal games). I strongly suspect that players will play what the want to play…
For the Record, Game 51 turn 1 showed a virtual across the board doubling of the market. LE/BR/ST just under 2x, Food did go down from 2 to 1, but MI/MO/TI more than doubled. And one of our allies forgot his transfer…he’ll make it up…
(I’m suspicious after seeing a lot of bad information floating around…like how hard\easy it is to steal etc.)