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so spies


Ogaden
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I remember when spies were uncapped. 

 

Should've gone with a soft cap. Then we could just say that they didn't have enough spies. 

 

I miss those days.... Was the only time I was in the leadership boards for something, lol. 

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It's a useful mental exercise. Through the years, many thinkers have been fascinated by it. But I don't enjoy playing. It was a game that was born during a brutal age when life counted for little. Everyone believed that some people were worth more than others. Kings. Pawns. I don't think that anyone is worth more than anyone else. Chess is just a game. Real people are not pieces. You can't assign more value to some of them and not others. Not to me. Not to anyone. People are not a thing that you can sacrifice. The lesson is, if anyone who looks on to the world as if it was a game of chess, deserves to lose.

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Rahl is talking about how even a few spies can beat 50 spies in a sabotage nuke operation because of how the current formula works. In such a setting, buying even a few spies means that your opponents have to spend at least one op everyday to be able to sabotage nukes, even after they have reduced the spy count to single digit range after several days of work and millions wasted.

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Rahl is talking about how even a few spies can beat 50 spies in a sabotage nuke operation because of how the current formula works. In such a setting, buying even a few spies means that your opponents have to spend at least one op everyday to be able to sabotage nukes, even after they have reduced the spy count to single digit range after several days of work and millions wasted.

Millions of $ and more importantly huge risk. The ability to actually do something in war requires an evaluation of risk. Increasing risk makes the ops far less palitable.

 

@ Caecus, the ops are barely feasable now with immense coordination. I dislike talking alliance stuff on this part of the forum but I hope that you can accept that MENSA can and does coordinate. We coordinate spy ops as well - and the margin of utility is very slim. With this change the utility will probably drop too far even for a highly organized and coordinated alliance to conduct any spy ops.

 

Alex, I appoligize for my tone. My RL job requires me to be an ass when people don't get it.

 

I have provided you a viable alternative though. Increaae the kill rate when there are under 30 spies. As it is now the decrease in kill rate requires 5 hits before an op is reasonable. What you could do is make it a flat 15 per kill spy. Before you think that is too OP consider that it would take 4 to get from 60 to zero...but another since that takes 2 days so you would still need 5 ops with the 10 rebuilt. And you will have necessitated another op per day (so 1 of 3) to keep the op feasable.

Edited by LordRahl2

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@ Caecus, the ops are barely feasable now with immense coordination. I dislike talking alliance stuff on this part of the forum but I hope that you can accept that MENSA can and does coordinate. We coordinate spy ops as well - and the margin of utility is very slim. With this change the utility will probably drop too far even for a highly organized and coordinated alliance to conduct any spy ops.

 

I wouldn't even think about it, and I was not implying that Mensa does not coordinate, I apologize if it seemed that way. If anything I would argue that in dealing with alliance wars, one of the few things I would do first is look which side Mensa plans to fall on. But that's regardless of the point. 

 

 

 

Each person is limited to 3 spy ops being done on them. In a theoretical matchup where two individuals with CIAs attempt to kill each other spies for the purpose of destroying nuclear weapons (which, I hope everyone here can admit that destroying nuclear weapons is the only thing really worth killing 60 spies over), the odds using EC is roughly 82% with the covert war policy in effect. Not bad odds, pretty shitty if you fail though. You lose $1.5m, a spy op against the person, and potentially some of your own spies.

 

But for the purpose of this matchup, let's say you do. You kill 16 spies, the person is down to 44. He rebuys that day back up to 49. And so on and so forth. Here is how many ops it would take to kill enough spies to be back in viable range, assuming you use all 3 spy ops to kill spies and all 3 spy ops are successful and the person rebuys spies each day.

 

Day 1:

 

60 -> 44 ($1.5M)

49 -> 33 ($1.5M)

33 -> 21 ($850k, but to be honest, I still would have gone $1.5M)

 

Day 2:

 

26 -> 15 ($850k)

15 -> 7 ($300k)

7 -> 1 ($300k)

 

By Day 3,you have already spent roughly $5M. The probability of having all 6 spy ops successful is roughly ~60% with the war policy. 60%! If on average 60% of the ops worked, I would be hesitant to use my spies anywhere when that money could be spent elsewhere more effectively. The probability of spying nukes with the enemy having even single digit spies (let's say 6 for funnsies) is 90% with EC and if you are cheap, QnD is 78%. 

 

 

This is entirely excluding the fact that anyone with CIA, a nuclear stockpile, and a brain would be on Arcane. If you want to spy nukes, you want them to be under 5 spies since it saves money to kill off those spies and then proceed to use the next two spy ops on QnD for the nukes. Thus, what Rahl correctly predicts, is, imo, going to happen, which is that the cost of killing nukes is going to take more money and resources, coordination, and time, heavily favoring the defender. 

 

 

 

This is also excluding the fact that this might be implemented in the future, further screwing with how many spy ops can go down: 

 

https://politicsandwar.com/forums/index.php?/topic/13576-less-omniscient-nations-more-obfuscation-of-facts/

It's a useful mental exercise. Through the years, many thinkers have been fascinated by it. But I don't enjoy playing. It was a game that was born during a brutal age when life counted for little. Everyone believed that some people were worth more than others. Kings. Pawns. I don't think that anyone is worth more than anyone else. Chess is just a game. Real people are not pieces. You can't assign more value to some of them and not others. Not to me. Not to anyone. People are not a thing that you can sacrifice. The lesson is, if anyone who looks on to the world as if it was a game of chess, deserves to lose.

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CC's analysis and the mensan analysis provided is totally in line with mine. if the update rolls out as is, it will be a rather significant nuke buff. hopefully there will be other changes that help balance it out

01:58:39 <BeowulftheSecond> Belisarius of The Byzantine Empire has sent your nation $0.00, 0.00 food, 0.00 coal, 0.00 oil, 0.00 uranium, 0.00 lead, 0.00 iron, 0.00 bauxite, 0.00 gasoline, 0.00 munitions, 1,000.00 steel, and 0.00 aluminum from the alliance bank of Rose.
01:58:46 <BeowulftheSecond> someone please explain 
01:59:12 <%Belisarius> sleep deprivatin is a &#33;@#&#036; @_@
01:59:14 â€” %Belisarius shrugs
01:59:18 <BeowulftheSecond> we're at WAR. WE ARE BURNING EACH OTHER'S PIXELS

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Thanks for doing the math for everyone C. I only mentioned MENSA to suggest that coordination is not the issue.

 

And your analysis is precisely why spies will cease to be an effective part of warfare.

 

And yeah I saw Alex's vauge reply to that thread.

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Because at 2 spies/day it currently takes 25 days to max your spies. At 3 spies/day it will take 17, which I believe is a more reasonable number. I don't see how that makes spies irrelevant.

 

And with the CIA and 5/day it still takes 12 days to max spies, but I believe the CIA needs the buff.

 

Honestly, this is why i love spies. Takes so long for them to be reliably useful, but the potential benefits are outrageous.

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I hope spy defense doesn't continue to raise, but I also hope I'll be able to rebuild more than 2 per day at some point in the future.

Unfortunatly the two are mutually exclusive unless there is some sort of new idea to throw out.

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