[Freeciv-Dev] the chances for diplomats (was: Dips. OOPS please read this one!)

[Reinier Post <rp@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Feb 27, 2001 at 07:50:20PM +0100, Thue wrote:
 
> Diplchance is 80 to begin with - 80 percent chance to defeat defending 
> diplomats! This should rather be around 20, no?

No, i think 20 is too low, in normal games you don't have the time and
resources to spend 5 diplomats per conversion attempt.  80 is on the high
side.  The best value may depend on other settings.

The exact effect of defending diplomats isn't too obvious:

  http://www.freeciv.org/lxr/source/server/diplomats.c?v=cvs#L1081

The attacking diplomat is paired off with each defending diplomat in turn,
in the order in which they happen to appear in the unit list, until
attacker or all defenders have been eliminated.  At each encounter,
the attacked has diplchance % chance of winning, the defender's being
a spy or veteran reducing this chance in an unclear way, while the
attacker's being a veteran has no effect.  Spies don't get paired off:
after infiltrating a city with a spy, its defending diplomats and spies
will still be there.

Having beaten all (0 or more) defenders, the attacking non-spy diplomat
will have a diplchance % chance of success in fulfilling its mission,
or 0% when trying to steal technology from a city from which has been
stolen before.  Spies on the other hand always succeed, but sometimes not
when trying to steal technology from a city from which has been stolen before.

The non-spy always dies, while the spy has a diplchance-influenced
chance of escape upon success.

In short, it's complicated.  I don't remember to what extent it matches Civ II.

> -Thue
 
-- 
Reinier