It's based on how much of a given resource is present. The figures I get from plugging numbers into Angel and what I can recall from experience are roughly (assuming ideal nw range):
Rob vaults: 1 thief per 765gc (no relations, cap ~5% of total stock), 1 thief per 600gc (war, cap about ~14% of total stock)
Rob granaries: 1 thief per 300 bushels (no relations, cap ~31.5% of total stock), 1 thief per 240 bushles (war, cap about 46% of total stock)
Rob towers: 1 thief per 85 runes (no relations, cap ~21.3% of total stock), 1 thief per 60 runes (war, cap ~36% of total stock)
Kidnap: 1 thief per 5.5 peasants (war, cap 4% of total stock). There is also a hidden 50% gains penalty for kidnapping someone with low peasants/acre, this needs to be tested but it's been shown to exist. Don't bother outside of war, the gains are too terrible to waste your stealth, and the cap is like 1.4%
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Nightstrike (soldiers): 1 thief per 5 soldiers (war, cap 13% of total stock)
Nightstrike (defspecs+offspecs): 1 thief per 5 specialists (war, cap 0.55% of total stock). Defspecs and Offspecs are affected by the same cap; add the number of defspecs and offspecs to determine the cap you're trying to reach when kiling specs.
Nightstrike (elites): 1 thief per 4 elites (war, cap 0.3% of total stock)
Soldiers, defspecs, and elites are killed on the same operation, but have seperate caps for each. I am not positive how the presence of one affects kills for the other, and I'm pretty sure these values are off, but they are close to what you should be sending to reach cap. By the way, NS doesn't care whether the troops are at home or out.
Steal Horses: 1 thief per 1.8 horses (peacetime, cap ~6.3% of stock), 1 thief per 2 horses (war, cap 6.8% of stock). The damage inflicted is twice what you take for yourself. Only horses at home can be stolen.
Arson: ???, approximately 3 thieves per target acre I think gets the cap on gains. It's not very strong though. Barren acres are included in basic arson if I'm not mistaken, so your gain will be constant but reduced by whatever % is barren.
Sabotage Wizards: ???, damage is based on how much mana the target has. In my rough experiments a while back, sending 2 tpa (target's acres) tends to get good returns at high mana levels, and it takes 16% of the target's mana in one op (so naturally, not worth it if your target has less than 32% mana).
Assassinate Wizards: Formula is in the guide somewhere. Cap is around 1.4% of the target's wizards, but since you can't see wizards outright, you'll either have to calculate the target's wpa or send until you find the cap.
Incite Riots: ??? but sending 4*target's acres is usually enough to get good duration on riots. The returns on this op have a significant random factor, with the lower end about half of the upper end. However, sending under the cap will have a linear effect. Practically speaking, you shouldn't waste your stealth on anything other than a long-duration Riot, since it's purely a holding action. Riots is surprisingly easy to land in my experience.
Propaganda: ???, has no known cap but the gains are highly random. Usually, sending 4*target's acres gives a significant portion of the target's specialist troops. Offense and Defense specialists are targetted seperately. Most people just send all for the best gains, but if you need to conserve tpa it's fine to send 3-4 of your tpa in order to limit losses and improve success rate. A Propaganda that takes defense specialists is incredibly strong, as I have observed props 5-6x as effective as a nightstrike; therefore, you have a reasonable chance of coming out ahead using Propaganda instead of NS when targetting defense. Propaganda is incredibly hard though, and thief losses are higher with the more difficult ops. You can only propaganda troops at home, so usually elites are an empty gain unless propping a t/m.
How do racial mods of farey and avian effect? Does it increase the cap or lower theives count?
How do racial mods of farey and avian effect? Does it increase the cap or lower theives count?
It increases the cap, but you'd send the name number of thieves in order to reach it. Same with watchtowers.
edit: note that Unfriendly and Hostile status (as the aggressor) increases thief gains as well. the rates are significantly better in hostile, but slightly worse than war. Angel doesn't show this and I don't think the guide does either.
I don't think that any type of bounce add GBP or that they differ in kills. The only difference that i know of is that raze is the only attack which is NW independent.
Does anyone else happen to know this? Bouncing is a very strong tactic btw:)
Another question.
If you cast MV on an Orc and it gets reflected, but you have MA on, does it get blocked?
pretty sure aura has no effect on reflected spells, or we would have heard about it by now.
bouncing is dumb and usually not something you'd want to do, unless you know a kingdom is really focused on one particular province. in war it's the method of last resort to win against a stubborn opponent, at the start of hostile it's usually better to do damage/get gains on the provs that can be broken. i guess if hitting a huge bank in fort stance it's okay, but by now many provs should be prepared for this and know to bring money and troops for retraining.
What I like about bouncing is that you can do 14 hits yet not give away button. With Orc/warriors if you get in 3-4 bounces on a a PFed TM you easily drop their def by 25-30%, even more. And that's a huge chunk of NW you take down immediatly (they generally don't run hosps, your attackers do). We tried it a few times this age, sadly each time the opposition backed out.
UE: that's why you plan around retraining army, and optionally building hospitals to defray some of the losses. Orcs can kill quite a bit, but in hostile it only works the one time, and whoever that happens to has about 10-12 hours to retrain about 5-6 dspa (or whatever is needed to plug the gap created). Usually in a war kingdom you should be able to break most provinces outright, and it's usually better to accept enemy ubs, and either land 7 hits where they will do substantial gains, or wave outright and maintain the pressure all along for far more damage. I guess if both kingdoms are in fort stance it makes sense to bounce, other than that it's pretty silly.
Disagree with you noobium. The extra land/massacre/learn gains are nothing compared to the extra troop losses of 7 more attacks. I can promise you bouncing a TM 4 times will hurt him more than 2 hits. There is GBP to reduce losses after the first hit either. Last advantage is that you get all your armies out (which is kinda important playing Orc) without having to do side-hits with the risk of getting retalled.
"hurt" only applies if you can follow up with actual hits. it applies a lot more to large kingdoms that rely on cows that war-tier kingdoms with little size variation. the typical t/m shouldn't be much bigger than the kingdom average, while cows contain a lot more of the kingdom's acreage relatively speaking; 25% of a large province is a lot more than 25% of a merely average province.
with that in mind, retraining costs (replacing with specs) would be something like 5-6 dspec/acre. if you were sitting in fortified or just waiting for someone to wave into to you, your kingdom will likely have soldiers and money sitting on the core. the soldier cost would be maybe 0.5 soldier/acre among your 16 or so core attacker provs, the gc cost about 2100gc/acre of the bounced province IF they retrain in normal stance, 1200-1300 with fortified. The gc cost would probably be about 150-200gc/acre amongst your whole kingdom in normal stance, fairly expensive - but, if the t/m can log when the bounce is happening, the replacement troops will be mostly ready (entirely ready if you revert to fort). Again, building hospitals as a preventative measure mitigates this, and Elf makes it highly impractical. If those hits were directed at targets, you're taking resources that are harder to reclaim, and gaining resources that defray the military cost of bouncing.
Given that Faeries and Halfers are pretty fragile now, it's highly likely your t/ms should be building hospitals, especially if they plan on using elites to hit stuff. The 10% land investment might seem superflous, but if don't expect to hit, you should be able to rebuild them without too much money.
I suppose I should try before I bash, but it's still silly.
Originally Posted by noobium
It's based on how much of a given resource is present. The figures I get from plugging numbers into Angel and what I can recall from experience are roughly (assuming ideal nw range):
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