Is there a difference of difficulty in Thief options?

[The Moon]

Is Propaganda more difficult than Nightstrike to succesfully perform? Kidnappings compared to Intel gathering?

Any stats or facts of this subject please? Are there base settings of difficulty for ops?

[jmiedema]

Short answer is yes there are. I haven't seen a guide with actual thief difficulty levels. Usually with thievery (unlike magic) there are so many extra modifiers that thieves get that mTPA vs mTPA rarely plays as much of a role as "auto-fail chance does" Like CS and Watchtowers.

Assuming no CS or Watchtowers on the enemy, I would recommend the following relative mTPA's for different ops (for decent ~75% success rate):

SoT - 0.75x of enemy mTPA
SoM/SoS/Survey - 1x of enemy mTPA
Infiltrate Thieves/resource robbing ops - 1.5x of enemy mTPA
Arson/Bribe Gens/Bribe Thieves/Prisoners/Riots/Kidnap - 2x of enemy mTPA
Steal Horses/Sabotage Wizards/Nightstrike - 2.5x of enemy mTPA
Greater Arson/Propaganda/Assassinate Wiz - 3x of enemy mTPA

This is just based on my experience with the ops, it isn't science by any means, but maybe will give an idea.

The BIGGEST factor I notice for fail rate is people oversending thieves. People are too confused by the gains/thief and how many thieves to send for max gains, so they end up sending substantially more thieves than are required for the op to maximize their gains. Most don't know that the more you oversend, the more auto-fail chance is added to the op. A good thief should always attempt to calculate the thieves required for an op for max gains, at least to get close to the actual amount, then you can always adjust thieves sent based on the gains you see. Example starting with 2500 thieves sent, then go to 2800, if the gains went up then you didn't hit the cap, so keep going up until you hit the cap, then gradually send less and less thieves as resources/gains go back down.

[Bo To]

SoT - 0.75x of enemy mTPA
SoM/SoS/Survey - 1x of enemy mTPA
Infiltrate Thieves/resource robbing ops - 1.5x of enemy mTPA
Arson/Bribe Gens/Bribe Thieves/Prisoners/Riots/Kidnap - 2x of enemy mTPA
Steal Horses/Sabotage Wizards/Nightstrike - 2.5x of enemy mTPA
Greater Arson/Propaganda/Assassinate Wiz - 3x of enemy mTPA

You didn't specify how many thieves for each op you are using which is really important as you said latter. For example you do bg/bt with 10 thieves for 1 tick but its hard to fail it even on h/r. Also I think steal horses is much easier than what you have posted.

P.S. my lucky post 666 :).

[jmiedema]

because # of thieves is relative to the actual resource amounts. The start of my post is strictly difficulty, in other words comparatively how much mTPA you need to have to be successful.

Actual thieves just varies way to much based on resources and op type. Maybe I will post what I know on thieves to send later, but too much info to do right now while at work :D (also most info regarding gains per thief and damage per op is information that is available in the guide)

[jmiedema]

and yea, for horses, I've never really done the op as an attacker, and would rarely if ever ask one of my attackers to do the op instead of a rogue/heretic because of the large # of thieves required to be sent on the op. Fails would really hurt.

SO it could very well be lower, but I'm not sure. Also, I'm not sure if Greater Arson is a higher difficulty than regular Arson (I rarely ever use regular arson) I just know as a rogue when I do the op I almost always have 3x more mTPA then the target I run it on, and it has good success rate.

As I said, not really a science, but maybe a better idea than nothing at all.

[The Moon]

Thank you jmiedema ... i greatly appreciate this information

(I reckon Arson would be easier than Greater Arson ...)

Cheers

[StratOcastle]

Thank you jmiedema ... i greatly appreciate this information

(I reckon Arson would be easier than Greater Arson ...)

Cheers

I've only played rogue once for a very brief spell, but I'm a regular abuser of general arson. You don't get much but it's an accumulated thing. When I did play rogue I had to try greater arson and it worked about the same as I recall.

I never play rogue but I love having them in kingdom. They're among my favorite hostile partners.

To clarify: I use to use arson a lot as an avian tac. I took over a very well built dwarf rogue once and greater arson was easy...possibly because it was very well built.

[Caelum]

The BIGGEST factor I notice for fail rate is people oversending thieves. People are too confused by the gains/thief and how many thieves to send for max gains, so they end up sending substantially more thieves than are required for the op to maximize their gains. Most don't know that the more you oversend, the more auto-fail chance is added to the op. A good thief should always attempt to calculate the thieves required for an op for max gains, at least to get close to the actual amount, then you can always adjust thieves sent based on the gains you see. Example starting with 2500 thieves sent, then go to 2800, if the gains went up then you didn't hit the cap, so keep going up until you hit the cap, then gradually send less and less thieves as resources/gains go back down.

I see this quoted a lot, but I've never seen any documentation or proof. I generally stick to sending the proper number of thieves not because of fail rate, rather just because I don't like losing thieves. However I did play an avian heretic a few ages ago and I generally sent all thieves every op out of laziness. I didn't notice any difference in success rate whatsoever.

[Andurilas]

I am also not convinced that oversending actually increases fail rate. You lose thieves for oversending even on success, but I suspect the pass/fail is just comparative TPA with the RNG in the mix.

To get consistent success on Propaganda, I've found something like 4:1 mTPA is required. Slightly less for AW, though this might be skewed because the op is used less often. I also think that Kidnap is higher difficulty than Nightstrike, from observation.

[Bishop]

Over sends definitely increase fails. Some of have biiiiggggg caps.

[Ampere]

There are formulas for robs, are there not?

[Ryshad]

http://wiki.utopia-game.com/index.ph...every_Formulas

[Ampere]

I thank you. Off to read.

[The Moon]

I was/am trying to rank them specifically with stats of success ... i suppose that sort of information must be earned and as such is closely guarded by by those that put in the time - since this game is a competition.

[Caelum]

I was/am trying to rank them specifically with stats of success ... i suppose that sort of information must be earned and as such is closely guarded by by those that put in the time - since this game is a competition.

There was a graph available at one point. I almost want to say Bishop gave out a pretty general difficulty chart at some point but I might be making that up.