Re: Scales for forced turmoil...
 

Did you ever try Pangaea with Turmoil-3, Luck-3, Growth-3 and Magic-3? Ok, you don't get faery creatures for free, but you're shurely "swimming" in nature gems and found magic items.

There are non-forgeable items, but remember: Everything is wish-able ...

There are heros, and there are heros. Some of them are truely powerful and can make a difference in the game.
The ulmish knights, e.g., on the other hand do really need some boost - having them come with some bodyguards won't be a bad idea ..

Re: Scales for forced turmoil...
 

I've run a batch of testbeds in the past to assess the relative merits of Luck and Order.

Methodology: I used 2 nations and a set of custom map files. I tried several set of scales, but usually sticked to default values except nation O had Order +3 and nation L had Luck +3.

* Site frequency was set to zero (to avoid side-effects from scale-altering sites).

* Capitals were cleared from their initial troops.

* Pop was set to 30k in the capitals and to 7500 in other provinces.

* I gave each nation 9, 12 or 15 extra provinces. One 1/3rd of the extra provinces also had a temple and lab.

* All provinces including the capital were heavily patrolled. I used troops with zero upkeep, including level 10 priests (Juggernauts) who were set to 'preach' to get the scales to their preferred values ASAP. Both nations had a dominion strength of 10 for the same reason.

Then I generated 40 turns. My 'scoring system' was:

+1 point/gold in the treasury.

+10 points/gem in the lab.

+X points/magical item (depending on its gem cost, eg 50 points for an Enchanted Sword)

+100 points/free lab or temple (halved because they don't always pop up in useful locations)

+x points/free fortress (half its base cost)

-200 points/lab or temple destroyed

-100 points/barbarian etc. invasion

I also had a look at the upkeep after 40 turns, and added 20 times this value to the final score (since the initial upkeep was zero, this upkeep comes only from free mages and troops).

My advice: if you want Order and Luck to be equally attractive on small/medium maps (~100k pop/empire), bump #misfortune to 15. On bigger/more populated maps (~170k pop/empire), bump #misfortune to 15 and drop #turmoilincome to 6. Bigger than that, even with these altered values, Order still looks like a no-brainer.

All this with random events set to common of course.

Re: Scales for forced turmoil...
 

Another reason Order 3 is better than luck : Order-3 is the enabling factor for the event that creates a fortified city with +25 gold income. It doesn't matter if you have luck or not (I've gotten the event when I had Luck in the province, and I've gotten it with Misfortune), but you have to have order 3. Too many of the uber-events are like this: Misfortune 3 and you'll still get them if only your Order or Magic scale is high enough.