Ops

Ops can refer to more than one subject.

Ops is a term that refers to operations taken by spies and wizards.

• Espionage (spy-ops)
  • Information gathering ops (info-ops): spy operations to gather information about other dominions.
  • Offensive operations (black-ops): spy operations used to damage other dominions.
• Magic (spells, rarely used term wiz-ops)
  • Information gathering spells (info-ops, although the term is mostly only used to refer to the espionage variant): spells cast to obtain information about other dominions and realms.
  • Offensive operations (black-ops): spells cast to cause damage to other dominions.

Success Formulas

There are two formulas which determine the chance of success for ops. Attacker Ratio and Defender Ratio here refer to the relevant Spies Per Acre (SPA) or Wizards Per Acre (WPA) found on the Statistics page of your Advisor, and are

Info Ops

0.8^(2/((Your Ratio / Defender Ratio) * 1.4)^1.2))

Theft & Black Ops

0.7^(2/((Attacker Ratio / Defender Ratio) * 1.3)^1.2)

Additionally, as of Round 38, success chances are now modified by you and your target's current spy or wizard strength, at 1 % extra success per 10 % extra strength that you have, and vice versa. This is applied after the above formula, so if the formula says that you should have 50 % success, but your strength is 80 % while your target is at 40 %, you'd have a 54 % chance of success.

Success rates do have a so-called clamp: a minimum or maximum success rate that comes in to play at the end. No matter what, you will always have a 1 % success rate on any op, while you will also only have 98 % success rate for info ops and 97 % success rate for Theft or Black Ops at the maximum. At equal strength, this translates to a roughly 10:1 ratio for blops. The exception to this is if the target has 0 spies or 0 wizards: if that is the case, your attempt will always succeed, bypassing any and all checks, including those for the -50 % success Wonders.

Examples

As a general idea of how often you should be successful, some examples of the success rate at any given type of operation are given below. Please keep in mind that these are probabilities, and that individual variance can and will affect you at various points in time. It is not a bug in the formula if you fail a 75% chance four times in a row; you merely got somewhat unlucky. Additionally, the ratios mentioned are relative to each other, i.e. 1 WPA to 0.5 WPA is the same as 2 WPA to 1 WPA, and include any bonuses or penalties you may have.

Type of Op	Relative Ratios and Success	Notes
Info Ops	1:4 ratio: 20.7% 1:2 ratio: 50.4% 1:1 ratio: 74.2% 2:1 ratio: 87.8%	Having half the ratio of your target means you can somewhat reliably get information on them, if you do not mind losing spies in the process.
Theft & Black Ops	1:4 ratio: 1.3% 1:2 ratio: 30.2% 1:1 ratio: 59.4% 2:1 ratio: 79.7%.	You usually want at near-equal ratios to at least attempt this, though some situations might entice you to try with worse.

Damage Reduction Formula

As of Round 31, damage from black ops is reduced based on the target's spy/wizard ratio.

Damage Reduction

DaysModifier = (0.025 * (DayInRound - 4) + 0.5 (0.5 on Day 4, 1.0 on Day 24, 1.5 on Day 44)

0.72 * LOG( 1 + 4 * (Ratio / DaysModifier)) (Ratio/DaysModifier is capped at 1, yielding a max of 50% reduction)

Reduction from spies/wizards per acre

Ratio/DaysModifier	Percent Reduction
0	0%
0.1	10%
0.2	18%
0.3	25%
0.4	30%
0.5	34%
0.6	38%
0.7	42%
0.8	45%
0.9	48%
1.0	50%

For Fireball and Lightning Bolt, the damage reduction comes in the form of reduced vulnerability (the maximum amount of peasants or improvements that can be destroyed). For all other ops, the damage reduction is additive with other damage reduction bonuses and caps at -80%. The ratio required to reach the cap of -50% scales linearly throughout the round (from 0.5 to 1.5).

See Also

• Infamy
• Mastery
• Op Center
• OP (Offensive power)