Can't finish off hoards due to AI withdrawing

**Taiwan Legion** · 10-08-2005, 04:59

think about it this way. List out all the possible outcomes

On a 2 assassination attempt there are 4 results

SF
SS
FS
FF

So to have a successful assasination in 2 attempts, you would either have to have SF, FS, or SS. What are the chances of those? You alraedy know that the chance of succeeding on the first attempt is 10%. And on the case that the first one don't succeed (90%), you could still be successful by succeeding on the second try, and the possiblity of that is 0.9 x 0.1, which is 0.09. Add them up, you get 0.19 (19%)

You could do that with 3 attempts too, but if you notice, the chance of success is just 1 minus the probability of failing every attempt, since you fail the assassination if you don't succeed on every attempt. So on a 3 attempt assasination, it'll just be 1 - (0.9^3), which is 0.271

But, I don't think the assassination possibility is very accurate. I think it's more of a arbitrary value. I've had a success rate of 50%, but after 30 attempts with reloading, he still fails everytime. I think the computer determine whether the assassination would be successful before you could actually attempt it, so the number actually mean nothing because the computer already determined whether you would succeed or not.

**Shambles** · 10-08-2005, 05:08

Originally Posted by Taiwan Legion

You alraedy know that the chance of succeeding on the first attempt is 10%. And on the case that the first one don't succeed (90%), you could still be successful by succeeding on the second try, and the possiblity of that is 0.9 x 0.1, which is 0.09. Add them up, you get 0.19 (19%)

You could do that with 3 attempts too, but if you notice, the chance of success is just 1 minus the probability of failing every attempt, since you fail the assassination if you don't succeed on every attempt. So on a 3 attempt assasination, it'll just be 1 - (0.9^3), which is 0.271

% is not that simple.

The fact that you try more does not mean that you increase or decrease your %

The assasin will still only have 10% chance as he is independant of the 1st and the 1st assasin No longer enters the equasion,

At 10% chance that would mean 10 assasins have a 99.8% chance of sucsess (or similar)
Where in actual fact they have 10% chance,
And there all independant of the others

**Magussen** · 10-08-2005, 07:32

Don't leaders who survive assassination attempts get traits or ancillaries making them harder to kill ?

**red comyn** · 10-08-2005, 11:06

Yip common mistake with the % chance, the coin being the best example. Its all because the first toss which is of course 50/50 heads or tales is completly independent of from the 2nd , 3rd , nth toss, which all have the the same 50/50 chance heads /tales.

As for reloading and trying again does the game not have some kind off "seed" to produce the same results if you try this method?

**Kraxis** · 10-08-2005, 13:23

Originally Posted by red comyn

Yip common mistake with the % chance, the coin being the best example. Its all because the first toss which is of course 50/50 heads or tales is completly independent of from the 2nd , 3rd , nth toss, which all have the the same 50/50 chance heads /tales.

As for reloading and trying again does the game not have some kind off "seed" to produce the same results if you try this method?

Indeed... Throw a million dices and you never get a single 6, what is the chance of it actually comming up with the million and first throw? One in six of course.

And since leaders tend to get a whole lot of protection very fast it is not a good idea to try to assassinate him with low chances.

**A.Saturnus** · 10-08-2005, 17:30

Shambles, everything Taiwan Legion said is indeed correct. If you use 10 assassins, each of the assassins has 10% chance to succeed. Each of them. That means, the expected value of successes is 1. The chance that none of them succeeds is 34,7%.

**Doug-Thompson** · 10-08-2005, 17:48

Originally Posted by Magussen

Don't leaders who survive assassination attempts get traits or ancillaries making them harder to kill ?

Yes. That's a very good point. I should have mentioned that.

**Conqueror** · 10-08-2005, 18:06

It's actually a trait-chain that keeps improving the more unsuccessful attempts are made. So if you try to use bad assassins for the job, the victim will quickly develop from watchful to obsessed by security and from scant trust to paranoid, making him damn near impossible to assassinate even with highly skilled agents.

**Murmandamus** · 10-10-2005, 00:34

I don't have the cash to buy them, so I suppose I'll have to keep chasing them around with single units until I can get some assassins trained up.

It's a pain because I had a single army defeat almost the entire hoard in 1 round and now I just want to clean them up so I can get on with things. The AI kept throwing 1 stack at a time against my army which was in a good defensive location.

6 Goth raiders, 8 Goth spearmen, 1 Goth lancers and the general. They went from completely green to nearly all having a silver chevron and I only lost about 30-40% of the men in the process.