Barriers
Basics | Mathematical Explanation | Advanced
Basics
Courtesy of Groentje
They are your protection against enemy spells and items:
The effectivness depends on how many you have.
2.5% of your land as barriers will give you then maximum 75% chance to
block spells and items.
1. In defensive battle they block attackers spells and items....
so your defense will benefit from them. This will save you from mages that
do nasty spell/item combo's on you.... like greens attacking greens with
Call Hurricane + Oilflask so the nixes flame burst themselves, or reds
trying to flame shield you, or whatever. It demotivates enemies if they see
their expensive items blocked and used for nothing - so next time they
won't use them on you.
2. They make it hard for an enemy to cast a spell on you (only YOURSELF
and ALLIES can spell/item you without barriers interfering)
This will save you from (some of the attempts to):
Death & Decay; Meteor Storm; Call Lightning; Confuse; Lazyiness; Locust
Swarm; Serenity; Volcano Eruption; Steal item; Fools Gold
3. They make it hard for an enemy to throw items on you.
Voodoo dolls, scrying mirrors, list of queens demands, rotten food, Books
of Phropecy, m.p. vortex etc.
Still 25% will pass you, but usually it is demotivating for spellers if they
see their expensive items bounce all the time, and they give up after a few
tries (ask the Dirty Dozen ;)
Building barriers costs a lot of turns. For every 0.1% of barriers to your lands, u get 3% barrier resistance.
You will need to have 0.11% of barriers to get 3% of barrier resistance.
Always build 0.11%, 0.21%, 0.31%..... 2.51% of barriers.
Cause 0.11% will give u 3% of barrier resistance which is the same as 0.2% but
0.21% will give u barrier resistance of 6%, which is 3% more.
There is no point wasting ur turns and mana to mantain the extra barriers that do
no work. After you finish researching i would
daily build new barriers, and always try to have it above 2%. Preferably
slightly above 2.5%.
If possible, try to have 60% to 75% barrier resistance when u reach rank 500
and above.
Mathematical Explanation
Courtesy of Celevagor:
I intend to present a mathematical understanding of barriers. What effects
they have and how to calculate their value. I will present as much statistical
analysis as possible and also attempt to explain how I arrived at the
computations. Expect to see a good deal of dry mathematical formulae before
it is all done with. You have been warned. |-0
This first part will deal strictly with barriers alone.
Barriers can vary in rating from 0 to 75. The rating directly corresponds to
what percentage of spells and items will be stopped from affecting your
kingdom. I.e. if you have a 51-barrier rating 51% of all incoming spells and
items will be completely stopped. This applies to spells used against you while
you are defending your country as well as all spells and items cast on your
country out of combat. They are effective even if the effect of the spell or item
is beneficial to you. Your barriers will not stop spells and items used by
another person in defense of his country.
For every 0.1% of your land that has barriers constructed on it you will gain a
3 barrier rating. The barrier rating always increase in increments of 3 and you
round down to the next lowest 0.1%. If you have 1.36% barriers it is the same
as 1.3% barriers and you will have a barrier rating of 39 in either case. In
some instances you build menu will show you with an exact increment of 0.1%
barriers and your report screen will still show your barrier rating with the next
lowest value of barrier. Your report screen is correct. To compensate for this
build one more barrier and your rating will improve.
If you get a scry report of a mages barriers and you wish to know what his
rating is this is how to compute it:
Divide the number of barriers by the total acres of land the target has then
multiply that number by 3000. If the target has 78 barriers on 4200 acres of
land he would have a barrier rating of 78/4200*3000=55.7. It would actually
be 54 as that would represent the next lowest barrier increment. If the
number that the formula comes up with is not divisible by 3 then shift to the
next lowest multiple of three. Alternatively, don't worry about it and let the
local math geek figure it out. After all 55.7 is pretty damn close to 54.
No matter how many workshops you have or how many barriers you have or
how much land you have it will always take one turn to build one barrier.
Barriers cost 50 mana per barrier per turn to maintain. If you have 50 barriers
it will cost you 2500 mana per turn to maintain them. If you run out of mana
they will not be the first things to go. Your troops, heroes, and spells will
desert you long before the barriers go.
Advanced
Courtesy of Celevagor:
In this part I will be looking at how certain spells combine with barriers for
added spell protection. It is important to note that there is no spell that will
aid in defending against items. Item defense is solely the realm of
barriers. Also most of what is disclosed here is also an educated guess on
my part based on my experience with barriers in times of war.
To my knowledge there are five spells that aid in defending against other
spells. All of these spells have different effects against different colors and
are less effective at less than maximum spell power. The following
statistics assume that these spells are cast by their own color and at
maximum spell level for that color.
Mind bar: provides a resistance of 35% against all magic except
phantasm, against which it provides a rating of 71%.
Protection from evil: provides a 56% protection against nether.
Shroud of Darkness: provides a 60% protection against ascendant.
Sunray: provides a 38% resistance against nether and phantasm.
It is my belief that a spell must defeat spell protection and barriers
separately before actually causing damage. I believe this is so for two
reasons.
1) If a spell had to defeat the sum of the barriers and defensive
enchantments then there would clearly be instances where a mage would
be invulnerable to spell assault. This is never the case. With persistence a
mage can always get a spell through.
2) If a spell only had to defeat the higher of the two protections then 25%
of all spells would at all times be able to penetrate spell protection. I have
seen instances based on reports of several people acting independently of
each other against a single mage where the spell resistance against
certain colors was above 75%.
What does this mean to you? It means that it is possible to have a spell
resistance higher than 75% but never 100%.
How do you figure this? You calculate this by figuring how likely it is for the
spell to penetrate the barrier and defensive enchantment separately and
then multiply the two together. This will give the likelihood of the spell
getting through your defenses. 100%-(the likelihood of the spell
penetrating) is the chance that your defense will stop the incoming spell.
I.e. If you are a black mage with max spell power and you have shroud of
darkness up and you also have a barrier rating of 60 then you will stop an
incoming white spell 84% of the time. 1-0.4*0.4=0.84 or 84%. Very
important note: Remember to always do the math based on the likelihood
of the spell penetrating!
Mind bar statistics
Barrier rating all but Phantasm Phantasm
0 35% 71%
21 48.65% 77.09%
33 56.45% 80.57%
51 68.15% 85.79%
66 77.9% 90.14%
75 83.75% 92.75%
Protection from Evil statistics
Barrier rating Nether All others
0 56% 0%
21 65.24% 21%
33 70.52% 33%
51 78.44% 51%
66 85.04% 66%
75 89% 75%
Shroud of darkness statistics
Barrier rating Ascendant All others
0 60% 0%
21 68.4% 21%
33 73.2% 33%
51 80.4% 51%
66 86.4% 66%
75 90% 75%
Sunray statistics
Barrier rating Phantasm and nether All others
0 38% 0%
21 51.02% 21%
33 58.46% 33%
51 69.62% 51%
66 78.92% 66%
75 84.5% 75%
