Mission percentages bugged

**Carl** · 03-08-2007, 04:31

I don't think so. i've had it hit nearlly 200%. I think each spy has his own chance then they all get added together and thats the chance.

however i suspect a hardcode ovveride ensures that theirs allways a 5% failure chance.

**HoreTore** · 03-08-2007, 04:39

Regarding reloading failed attempts...

It seems that the game only lets you reload one time with a new calculation, that calculation is then remembered in the save, so that any subsequent reloads are given the same calculation.

If you've played Civ, you'd be familiar with the system. Honestly, I think it's good. Stops some of that reload cheating ;)

EDIT: just noticed I'm the third one to post this. Note to self: read entire threads before replying...

**Werner** · 03-08-2007, 04:56

I used to think that the "random seed' was saved also, but its not. I've used a 10/10 assassin to kill the pope before and around the 3rd or 4th reload it'll usually work. I think its more of a game mechanic, they dont think you should be able to kill so-in-so because set amount of faction heirs are left or set amount of factions are against this faction. For example, most of the time this problem has occured against smaller factions who are financially poor, dont have big armies or are getting pushed off the map. Maybe its a balance tool so you can't just spam your enemy out of existence with assassins? Either way it sucks and should be fixed

BTW I have also seen the 113% chance of success, it happens when there are a bunch of spies inside an enemy city.

NOTE: To the guy who was talking about all percentages being rounded up or down by 5%. Huh? I could show you a million pictures of spies with 100% ratings for getting into a city/spying on someone etc..etc..

**Whacker** · 03-08-2007, 05:20

Originally Posted by Werner

NOTE: To the guy who was talking about all percentages being rounded up or down by 5%. Huh? I could show you a million pictures of spies with 100% ratings for getting into a city/spying on someone etc..etc..

My thought as well, but I wasn't going to get into that.

The game has always shown me percentages down to the ones digit not rounded, for example 38%, 53%, etc etc.

**holycow** · 03-08-2007, 09:19

from my experience, the percentages do not correlate to %success at all. I've had 17% and succeed and 95% and fail. Obviously save before you committ. And after reload, go move something else or what I do is try an inconsequential spy action on diplomat/princess/etc to get diff seed.

**HoreTore** · 03-08-2007, 13:19

Originally Posted by holycow

from my experience, the percentages do not correlate to %success at all. I've had 17% and succeed and 95% and fail.

Why should that be wrong? 95% doesn't mean a guaranteed success, and 17% is almost a one in five chance...

**Foz** · 03-08-2007, 18:16

Originally Posted by holycow

from my experience, the percentages do not correlate to %success at all. I've had 17% and succeed and 95% and fail. Obviously save before you committ. And after reload, go move something else or what I do is try an inconsequential spy action on diplomat/princess/etc to get diff seed.

Holy cow! Seriously, this is about the worst understanding of statistics and probability that I have ever seen. 95% success means 5% failure, which is still 1 in 20. It's not ridiculous at all to fail sometimes when you have a 95% success rate. Just because a result is likely to happen does not mean the random system is broken if it does not. The converse also holds true: just because something is very unlikely does not mean you should expect to never see it. In poker, for instance, the odds of hitting a natural royal flush are 1 in 649,740. The odds when extra cards are involved (draws, or community cards for instance) are a bit better, but still nothing remotely likely. Odds like this should make it impossible to see a royal flush, right? Nope. I've seen 3 already and am only 26 years old - one of them was actually dealt to me. I can sit there and expect not to see that royal flush all day long, and most times I'm right - but sometimes, it does happen. When it does, contrary to feeling like the deck isn't sufficiently being randomized to prevent the royal flush from being dealt, I take heart: a seemingly impossible event should still happen sometimes. It's the occasional unlikely event that really lets you know a random system is working correctly - any simple system can produce the favored result. Those unlikely events shouldn't happen often, but anything with a chance to happen will generally happen sometime if you wait long enough.

The point is that the long odds in M2TW are nothing even close to those of the royal flush, so you can't go around claiming the random system in the game is broken just because you see some things happen that only have 1 in 20 odds of happening. They should be happening a noticeable amount of the time, and in my experience do occur at approximately the 1 in 20 times that they should.