abducts are fine

[pathetic sheep]

Why are you trying to take scientists from provs with low numbers?

Is not about what I gain. The important part is that they feel a loss and believe I gained. Plunder requires that there is gold (maybe runes is some rare cases). A traditional march/conquest means I get stuck with the land. If I already have to much land for my army size (or WPA etc) this is a problem. The raze attack, massacre, and abduct give me nothing so the target knows I gained nothing.

[pathetic sheep]

Got one I think Friday, slightly bigger province and kd (arround 5% and 10% respectively) 27 scientists on the target, might not have run any protection. Failed a day or two earlier, on a 26 scientist t/m, nw arround the same, kd nw perhaps 10% smaller, might have run protective buildings or 27 might have ben the lowest number to give a possible return.

Abduct works, and it works just fine, in 1-2 weeks even the ones that don't know how it is played can get returns from abducts.

All the intel thats been collected so far thats about abduct points towards 30-31 being the number that needs to be achieved before abduct is viable. We dont know for sure either but thats part of the game, finding things out.

Why look at just the total scientists. I got an alchemy professor. Target had 15 alchemy professors. [in war, 104% net, not hit] Could be based on any of these:

-total scientists
-Total professors
-professors in a field
-skill points in a field

If it had been scientists in a field we should have seen a few abductions when the targets had 15+ novices.

You could claim meteor showers are broken for mystics because you can't do meteor showers much of the time. Making scientists harder to take also makes them more valuable because they are easier to keep. Taking the crime + channeling profs from a thief/mage could be a viable tactic. Especially if you can abduct in hostile.

edit:
Copy to strategy forum: http://forums.utopia-game.com/showth...cting-num-bahs

[Sheister]

Boooo abducting normal to normal at 110% nw target on 20 scientists returns no scientists.

Very sad.

[Madchess]

Well I assume there is a great bit of luck and a part of skill involved in targetting at the lowest possible abduct. The theory of mass scientists don't really work alone atleast or people would have returns much earlier. I abducted a food professor from 7 or 8 professors in that category, the target I failed on had 84,5% in channeling which I think is atleast 8, so while it may seem logic I'm more a believer that a random dice is rolled to determine:

1 whether or not I get to capture a scientist (only if above minimum, which could easily be 25 insted of 27, but with a low % chance)
2 what category it is captured from (maybe auto fail if to few in that category, for instance 6 or more gives a possibility)

This means that even on 40 professors we could still see 0 gains for skilfully targetting while others might be lucky on 25. It makes sense if you think about it, at flat rate non random everyone would pull off 1 at this point with the right target, but what would be the point if I can take 1 from you and you are litterarily guaranteed to take 1 back when you retal?

[Korp]

I lost one with being on 28 scientist. He came back some hours later though.

[Sheister]

Oh Madchess? Is that how it works? So abducts are like two "rolls". First rolls what science category you abduct from, and then a second checks % recovery of that? Is that what you are saying?

[brickwolfman]

July 13 of YR1 A new scientist, Novice Dainthi (Channeling), has emerged and has joined our academic ranks.
July 14 of YR1 A new scientist, Novice Alvashjthran (Channeling), has emerged and has joined our academic ranks.
July 16 of YR1 A new scientist, Novice Thrythhildi (Crime), has emerged and has joined our academic ranks.

I havent got a problem with the science change. No labs :)

[Madchess]

I'm just guessing but my guess would be the other way arround.

Say if 25 is safe from abducts then 26 gives you 1 in 25 chances multiplied with % gains and 27 gives you 2 in 25 chances multiplied with same factor and so on. 51 would then give 1 + 1 in 25 chances for a 2nd assuming 100% gains.

Afterwards if you get 1 scientist out of 26 you have 1 in 26 chances for any scientist, so basically rolling a 25 sided dice on the first probability and a 26 sided to determine who will be abducted once gains is confirmed.

It could be by a factor of 20, the random factor could be much less significant, or it could be much more complicated, but this would be my sugestion.

[Shrinky]

My KD mate had 20 scientists. On an abduct, he lost a Professor.
Following are relevant details:

My KD is about 90% the size of the attacker's KD.
My KD mate is about 91% the size of the attacker.
Non anon attack. Avian tactician attacker. Elf mystic defender.

From this, it doesn't seem like there's a threshold above which scientists start getting abducted. It seems more like the more professors you have, the higher are the chances of getting a scientist as long as KD and Province NW factor is in your favour. Perhaps a lot of abducts early on failed because most of the scientists were still novice and graduates.

[Goodwitch]

he had 20 and lost 1? maybe it is all chance based like nb cure of plague after all

[jdorje]

Did an abduct, got 0 scientists. Target probably had 25 or so.

[StratOcastle]

I did one without looking and got zero, but I killed some people. I cast a couple of amnesia spells before hand so the abduct wouldn't hurt them as much. It's that I care, even in retaliation.

[Grrahl]

The last few days attackers in my KD has begun cashing in on the unfair advantage they have over TMs.. getting gains on provs +-10%, and similar KDs, with about 30ish Scientists.. As i predicted the most active attackers are soaring ahead of our TMs in a big way, the worst being 33% ahead of my 31 scientists already.. I guess I could start marching with my beasties in normal, but atm that would take a full send on similar attacker provs, leaving me exposed to some very heavy petting.. the Revelate spell, which is all but crap doesnt really help that much (I guess we'll be slightly ahead of other TMs).. the only thing that really helps is the cap on science, so even if the attackers max their sci first, we may be able to catch up eventually.. but, perhaps you should introduce some insanely hard op next age, like KN Scientists or something, to make up for this? or atleast de-nerf our leets a little bit?

[TommyB]

Forces from An unknown province from lalala (x:y) came through and ravaged our lands! They abducted zero scientists! We lost 10 Zombies in this battle.

Abducts are fine! :)

[Migz]

i did 2 abducts in war, 2 different targets, 1 target had 34 scientists the other had 31, still got 0. and they were 98% of my size and 108% of my size.