Re: It\'d make a reasonable game configuration opti
 

You can alchemize fire gems. Besides, if in the second year you don't have enough income to buy a lab, are you sure that your strategy is good?

Re: It\'d make a reasonable game configuration opti
 

You can't alchemize fire gems without a LAB http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Also, several people have suggested that one save up gold incase this exact type of event occurs, but you can't save up gold, there isn't a "1st Bank of Dominions" out there to store your gold for a rainy day.

The closest you can get is to alchemize fire-gems, which is exactly what you CANNOT do without access to a lab, you see?

It's a beautiful example of Catch-22

Re: It\'d make a reasonable game configuration opti
 

You have a treasury of unlimited size.


Unless you have so little self control that you can't bring yourself to not spend 400 of your gold.

Re: It\'d make a reasonable game configuration opti
 

What is your strategy that leads to having "no realistic ability to generate income"?

By year 2, you don't have enough provinces to have at least that much gold coming in? Luck events only affect one province at a time, so even if your capital's income was trashed, conquered provinces shouldn't all be.

By year 2, most people will have/be building a new fort/lab anyway. Lets you recruit more mages and insures against this kind of problem.

Abyssia does rely on gold. Are you doing something, massive blood hunting maybe, to crush your income and relying entirely on fire gems for gold?

In short, this seems a weakness in your strategy. You're gambling on this not happening, when there are reasonable ways to prepare for it.

Re: It\'d make a reasonable game configuration opti
 

If you need money for a lab you can always pillage a province. The problem is more losing your lab if you have no mage (it may happen in turn 2 if you have an imprisioned pretender and play a nation recruiting an holy 3 priest the first turn... you'll have to find a mercenary mage or wait 30 turns), or temple if you have lost your prophet and have no priest (but not so important as after 8 turns max you can make a new one).

The game breaking events are more often early invasions and ancient presence/migrations/plagues.

Re: It\'d make a reasonable game configuration opti
 

Can you confirm ? I'm positive about the lack of "safety period" in 3.00-3.02 (I've seen Plagues on turn 2 on several occasions), but not after.

Re: It\'d make a reasonable game configuration opti
 

You mean that was your ONLY lab? Just curious, what is your strategy? Year 2, with no income for lab (and no second lab), but at the same time 2500 worth of mages... - that means that you had enough income until just recently. If you're bloodhunting everywhere you could stop bloodhunting for a turn or two, but then, does it mean that you've 2500 worth of mages (that have nothing to do without lab) and enough bloodhunters to drive income to zero? How did you manage to recruit them with only one lab? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: It\'d make a reasonable game configuration opti
 

I dont think its as clear as a "no events for x turns". Its more like no catastrophic events for x turns. And of course everyone has different opinions on what is or isnt catastrophic. Id say that losing a lab before you would have recruited a mage would be a biggy.

Re: It\'d make a reasonable game configuration opti
 

Ok, 1: you have an unlimited size treasury, but in no way that I'm aware of can you protect any amount of gold from being itself wiped out by a bad event or being collected by troops or etc. You can't save say 200 gold for a rainy day, because all the gold in your treasury is open game.
2: I was alchemizing fire-gems for income, which is how I afforded all those mages.
3: I didn't really have a "strategy" in this instance, since I was just testing out Abyssia's ability to research in the early part of a game. In a real game I'd definitely have to build an additional lab or two.

Besides which, I've been trying to develope as far as they can be developed, strategies which don't rely on a gold-income. It makes the game a bit more challenging and more of an intellectual exercise.

That's not really here nor there, however, I'm just recording bad luck events on this thread-and I'd agree that by year 2 it's reasonable to expect to be able to recover from a bad event.

Should such a bad event be occurring by year 2 with Luck 1 and rare events? To decide that is the purpose of this thread.

Re: It\'d make a reasonable game configuration opti
 

Well some bad events are likely to happen, so its more of a question of HOW bad an event isnt it?