Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

If I'm playing Turmoil/Luck, its usually because i'm already playing S3 H/C3 D3. Ie, big bless territory (Mictlan, Lanka, etc...) or something like LA Ermor (meh, population).

Returns from luck are vastly increased by D3 and M2+, because it opens up a number of big cash events that also come with magic items. T3S3C3D3L3M3 has netted me 6000+gold/year in events in some games, plus gems and magic items. (Not to mention free forts/temples/labs)

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Death really opens up good events?

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

A few big ones, but just having death at any level (including neutral, instead of growth 1) means you're open to all the plague events. The scales listed above only really work for Ashen Empire or a heavy bless nation in a short game on a small map. Otherwise he needs to expand faster than his dominion and that becomes hard on a large map.

If you want to do your own analysis, check the event list that I have linked from my sig.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

My D3L3 scales have yielded a feeble amount of good events on the course of the current game (turn 74). As I mentioned I have strong dominion and many provinces.

Thanks but no thanks for that luck scale. I'm going to stick with either neutral or Mft 1 in the future.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Actually, I often get the plague at Mft 2 Gr 1.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

By the way, I may say that I had a good enough experience with Luck/Turmoil as Helheim and EA Ulm. I think that it's more of cheap castles- than cheap mages- dependant.
I also agree that Luck becomes better with other positive scales. And Misfortune worse with the same. Drain+Misfortune = Magic Fading = ouch!

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Death is pretty brutal all around. I tried Death/Luck/Turmoil with Pan and got scourged with plagues. A couple in the capital pretty much offset most gains from the random income events (not to mention the late game joy of managing starving maenad hordes).

Luck is a slippery slope. You pick it, then think you can take some Turmoil to boost its power, then figure you'll throw in some Death thinking you will get the dying prince with his 1500 gold and some powerful magic item, then you go for Magic scales to spice things up with visions of vast gem hordes - in the end you have just concocted a big dookie stew with plagues, chaos, poverty and all-around misery.

Heed my warnings and stick with Or3/Sloth2/Mis2/Mag1!

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Not all plague events are prevented by growth.

A quick check of the events list tells me that there is one poploss 50% plague event that can happen regardless of growth/death scale.

There are five other famine or plague events that the presence of a growth scale prevents, and those events have requirements of death 0 (famines) and death 1, death 2 or death 3.

So yeah, if you have misfortune 2 and growth 1, it increases chances of bad events and eliminates a substantial number of certain events from the list, making that one event then more likely.

As far as death events that grant gold, there is one single luck 2 death 3 1500 gold event and one luck 1 death 1 750 gold event. That's all the gold you can get based on death. In almost all cases the money events are either order scale events or luck/order.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Absolutely. In CBM make it Mis1 or neutral. As it currently stands taking luck doesn't return the design points investment.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

When I talk about absolutely tanked scales like T3S3H/C3D3L3M1+, the L3 is mostly to mitigate how bad the other scales are. D3 without L3 is a death sentence. And you take scales that bad precisely so you can afford triple blessed sacreds or other crazy nonsense, not because you want luck scales.

Ideally I vastly prefer O3L3 combinations to T3L3 combinations. Even O3S3H/C3D3L3M1+ is vastly better from just a scales consideration. But it costs 240 more points. You're not getting triple blessed jags that way.