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

[Thue <thue@xxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday 27 February 2001 23:53, Reinier Post wrote:
> 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

Well, if you have a defending diplomat in your city you deserve to be pretty 
well defended. IMO, in a fixed gameplay you would have far fewer diplomats 
around. Civ is a wargame, not a diplomatgame.

-Thue