Patrolling and Unrest

[krpeters]

Well this is interesting.

I invite you all to try this yourselves. Ramp up taxes, then put a patroller with a medium army (say, 30 troops) to catch the rebels. But one twist: give the army orders "guard commander" and watch what happens.

Mine become instantly pathetic. I think there's some sort of combat mechanic involved, which is why flyers and troops with rapid movement are more effective. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a hidden battle happening somewhere.

[parone]

pathetic how?

[John_Madlock]

I think you are wrong. I set guard commander order, even retreat, and I see no difference.
I even created 2 players game and I set for both 200% tax and patroling commands. I didn't see any battles resolving between turns.

[krpeters]

after further experimentation, I may be totally wrong. Just an odd coincidence possibly.

I'm just trying to figure out why sometimes 30 harpies are enough to slaughter 30 rebels and other times they can't kill 5.

[momfreeek]

I think its covered here:
http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/User:...fect_unrest.3F

"Basically, every patroller will catch 0,5 brigand, but the graph is linear (with 30 patrollers you have the same chance to catch, say, 0, 10, 20 or 30 brigands). So, its much more random than if each patroller has 50% chance to succeed."

It also has the calculation to compare patrollers:

"Faster units are better patrollers: an unit with a tactical (battlefield) move of 20 (cavalry) count as 1,3 foot patroller. Flyers count as 2 patrollers. Some units, like the Forester (Man) have a bonus. Mindless units have a penalty."

[JonBrave]

Originally Posted by momfreeek

I think its covered here:
http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/User:...fect_unrest.3F

"Basically, every patroller will catch 0,5 brigand, but the graph is linear (with 30 patrollers you have the same chance to catch, say, 0, 10, 20 or 30 brigands). So, its much more random than if each patroller has 50% chance to succeed."

(Excellent link BTW.) Try as a might, I still can't get this (the "linear", the 0.5 catching not being the same as 50%, basically the whole thing). Care to clarify?

[momfreeek]

I did a quick search for "dice bell curve"; the first few paragraphs here seem like a decent explanation:
http://oldguygaming.com/probability-and-dice-rolling

it applies to coin flips as well as dice rolls (a coin being a 2 sided dice). with 30 coin flips there are many combinations with 15 heads + 15 tails but only one with 30 heads.


so given 2 ways of calculating the result:

- flipping 30 coins and adding all the heads
- rolling a single 31 sided dice (0-30)

it could be said that the second method is much more random (as extreme results are far more likely)

[jotwebe]

Linear simply means that extreme outcomes are just as likely as middle-of-the-road ones. As opposed to something like a bell curve where the average is also the most common.

So, for example, imagine you have a bunch of 40 militia with and indy commander patrolling away on your overtaxed cap, with a destealth strength of about 50. Say taxes are 150%, so 10 points of unrest. Now your 50 points of destealth mean that up to 50 points of unrest can be patrolled away - but possibly none at all, too. You're rolling a d50.

So on any given turn, there should be a 20% chance that your actual destealth value is below 10, and unrest ensues.

That's from the manual and the wiki. Makes me wonder if having two smaller patrolling groups instead of one big one gave two rolls and so more consistent results?

Edit: ninja'd

[John_Madlock]

I think it is even more like reverse bell curve. In my tests extreme results are very common and average results are very few.

[momfreeek]

0-7, 8-22, 23-30

8-23 covers the median 50%, even though 8 feels quite extreme to me. It would take a lot of tests to clean out coincidental randomness but I'm not enough of a statistician to quantify that. Results or it never happened!