Thief/Mage Strategies
From UtopiaWiki
pasletositz basc4t There are a few really effective strategies to use if you are a thief/mage. If done properly they can totally disable a province, which is very useful in war.
| Table of contents |
Economic Attack
This works very well against enemy attackers. The main goal is to quickly reduce the target's economy and draft by eliminating the target's peasants. Without peasants, a province will generate very little money due to a low raw peasant income and the target's Building Efficiency will quickly decline. Without peasants, a province will be able to draft very few (if any) troops due to a low peasant base and a high draft rate. In addition, as a target's province becomes unable to pay full wages the province will suffer a drop in Military Efficiency and the target will be unable to send out their army unless wages have been paid.
- Note that applying this tactic to a single province will probably not be so efficient because he will recieve aid from his kingdom mates.
- Also note that the effect of this strategy takes some time to kick in, Military Efficiency and Building Efficiency does not decrease instantly. Also remember that with Age29 "free spec" convertion he can still train defence or retrain offence without money, he just needs some soldier aid.
Thief Operations
- Riots - Reduce the targets income by causing riots. Note that merchants are immune to this op.
- Kidnappings - Steal the targets peasants. You may go over your max population, but the peasants will leave the next turn. This provides a temporary bonus to Building Efficiency and you may find yourself drafting more than usual for that hour.
- Night Strike - In case a target has a lot of defensive specs and or soldiers its wise to run a lot of NS operations on him/her. Doing NS on a province with all elite defensive is pretty useless so remember only do this op on a province with a lot of def specs/and or soldiers. It is also important to note that a nighstrike will first only target the soldiers of a province if the province has a large amount of them.
- Rob the Vaults - Reduces the amount of gold the enemy has to fund or rebuild their damaged armies.
Mage Operations
- Mystic Vortex - This spell is to remove Reflect Magic (if available to your target), Nature's Blessing and Love & Peace (if previously targeted with a peasant attack). Also it is there to remove Minor Protection or Greater Protection, and especially Fog. By doing this you aid your attackers by improving their attack time and ability to break targets.
- Storms - This spell reduces a targets birth rate.
- Meteor Shower - This spell has a duration effect of killing peasantry and troops at home each turn.
- Greed - Troops will demand more money for upkeep and reduce the provinces net income. Note that it DOES affect merchants too.
- Fireball - Each cast will instantly kill a large number of the target's peasantry (estimated 3-6%). Use the rest of your mana on this operation.
- Explosions - Part of aid, as received as send will be destroyed. Use it if needed. Especially after a large set of ops designed at killing his economy!
- Important - For maximum damage, coordinate with other t/m's in your kingdom to select a target and decimate his peasantry, moving onto a new target after sufficient damage has been done. The strongest mage should focus on casting Mystic Vortex and Meteor Showers as those are the most difficult spells in this series. Storms and Greed are the easiest spells in this series and should be the role of the weakest mage.
Common Mistakes
The target chosen for an economic attack should not be immediate targets for attackers unless that province is already underpopulated. If T/M's take 20,000 peasants off a province and then attacks come through and take off 500 acres all of the T/M's work has been undone. Most of those 20,000 peasants would have been force to leave due to lack of space. T/M's and attackers need to coordinate targets to make sure the attackers do not undo all of the hard work of your T/M's.
A series of ops and spells on a target should serve a set goals. eg, starving a target, weaken the economy, ... Different goals dont mix. For each goals there is an assorted set of completing ops and spells. For instance starving should be done by casting vermin, droughts, torching farms, stealing food. It does not help if one cast fireballs of kidnaps the starvation target because that only reduces the effect of the previous ops performed (less peasants means less need for food, they would have died anyway).
Starvation
This works well against races that consume more food (Dwarves), just don't do it against Undead (they don't need food) or against Shepherds, they're impossible. The Undead race however was removed from the game. The greater the difference between your need for food and your available food is, the more peasants, thieves, wizards and troops (all sorts) will die. Starvation of a province is nearly impossible to achieve if the province is in a decently-coordinated kingdom. Use this technique only on dwarves in bad kingdoms and especially if you intend to send a dragon.
NB: As of Age 40 Dwarves have a normal food consumption rate and dragons no longer give -30 penalty to food production.
Thief Operations
- Rob the Granaries - Very important to get their supply low
- Torch Farms - Very important if you want to kill lots of troops while starving someone
Mage Operations
- Droughts - Very important, this reduces their food production
- Vermin - Increases food decay. This is only really useful if you are trying to reduce someone's stockpile of food. Once they are starving, Vermin does no harm to them.
- Mystic Vortex - To remove Fertile Lands and Nature's Blessing spells. Make sure this is done first so you do not remove harmful spells as well
- Explosions - Hinder the food aid that the target's kingdom mates may try to send to him/her.
Destruction of Military
There are a few ways of directly destroying military power. This is very useful against unbreakable provinces.
Thief Operations
- Night Strike - This instantly and permanently kills troops. Soldiers suffer highest losses, followed by specialists, and few elites are killed.
- Bribe Generals - Lasts 2 tics on average (range 1-3), max effect is +15% losses on targets OFFence (when they hit), 0% on defence, thief numbers = double targets acre value. Effect doesn't stack for multiple ops. I can't completely discount that our testing did not happen to randomly nail a nominal "home" general, (if the op works that way at all - see below). Shorter effect and less + losses for fewer thieves sent (and yes, those 10 thief BG's ARE utterly useless). It does not appear to be "one" general bribed on one of the 2 hits, but rather the offense overall gets +casulaties. Not a great op - 1 BG may wipe as much offence as maybe 3 NS if you work through the math, needs twice as many thieves for max effect vs NS, and only useful if the target is active/ attacks within the ~2 tics.
P.S. Unfortunally , everyone can add information here. The info above is not full about NS, and WRONG about Bribe Generals. Bribe Generals works very like riots. The more you sent, longer is duration, but strength is same. I did Bribe Generals that lasts 8 hours. Also it kills troops on defense too. I will add more info about thievery, to be more clear.
- In any stealing/killing operation you make, there are two caps:
- There is a maximum amount your thieves can carry/kill, I'll call this number 'capacity'
- There is a maximum amount that can be killed/stolen at the target province. I'll call this number 'damage'
- If you are in hostile/war, these numbers go up.
- If your nw size differs too much, these numbers go down. The damage you would make is divided by your nw ratio (so if he is twice your size or half your size, you will only do half of normal damage).
- If you are sending too many thieves for a job (oversending), the ones not getting their share might frame you, so your chance of success goes down, and even if you succeed, you'll lose thieves.
- Your thieves keep 10% of the gold they stole, that's their share for work.
- Intra-kingdom you can access all ops, but you do not get any bonus - it's as if it was done in no relations.
- Night Strike kills big percent of soliders, half of that percent specialsts, and quoter of that percent - leets. Sorry didn't remember the number, will look were I saved it. NS also kills troops that are out.
- Bribe Thieves lowers with 10% thievery effectivness of enemy. The number you sent affects only duration.
- Rob the Vaults - No Relations
- max damage - ~5.2%
- thief capacity - ~40 per thief
- amount to send - 1.3 for 1000
- Rob the Vaults - Unfriendly
- max damage - ~7.4%
- thief capacity - ~57 per thief
- amount to send - 1.3 for 1000
- Rob the Vaults - Hostile/war
- max damage - ~14.5%
- thief capacity - ~114 per thief
- amount to send - 1.28 for 1000
- Some simple example. Target has 1 000 000 gc. And it's 80% of your NW. No relations.
- In perfect situation you could steal 5.2% of it's gold fith first OP, or 52 000 gc. But you will have also 80% cap because of NW difference, which means you could 41 600 gc
- Optimal amount to sent is (1 000 000 / 1000) * 1.3 = 1 300 thieves if same NW, or 1040 because he is 80% of your NW.
- 41 600 / 1 040 = 40 - gc that each thieve brings.
Mage Operations
- Meteor Shower - This spell has a duration effect of killing troops at home each turn.
- Nightmares - Instantly causes troops to become unavailable for a period of time (6 hours). Soldiers permanently quit the army. This spell affects specialists more than it does elites.
- Pitfalls - Causes the target to suffer increased losses in combat.
