Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

I think a positive luck scale should eliminate the worst events entirely, but they should still be possible without positive luck. That way order/misfortune would be less of an obvious choice. Maybe order should have less of an effect on random events too, since the income is a pretty big bonus on it's own.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

I was playing a game where that random event about heroes liberating one of your provinces occurred in the province where my (rather wimpy rainbow) pretender was searching for sites. Bye, bye pretender.

Random events need to be toned down a bit http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif .

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

Things like that can always happen unless random events with an attack are completely removed, wich would IMO be a bad solution to a non-existant problem.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

The random events have already been set to mostly avoid the beginning of the game when it can cost you the whole game.

Luck scale doesnt affect the number of events, only the type (good/bad)

Order/Chaos scale affects how often they happen (with good and bad affected by luck)

The game setting can also affect whether they happen sometimes or alot.

Certain events are more common based on other scales, province conditions, seasons, actions you have taken, etc.

There is no zero. So even if you pile ALL the settings to having as few events as possible then you get maybe a 10% chance in a province that you have not picked on in any way. Everything you do goes up from there.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

I think it's very much a problem. In a game against the AI, you could always either play it out for the fun of seeing if you can recover from it or start a new game.

In a PBEM game, however, where I had committed to playing for several weeks, I would be very upset if something like that happened in the first 20 moves.

I think the events happen way too often anyway, even with the rare setting. Perhaps another very rare setting would work.

The way it is now, I play with the rare setting and feel almost forced to take Order +3 so that they happen what I consider a reasonable amount of the time. That's just silly.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

The possibility of losing a pretender to a random attack is not a problem that needs fixing because: A)It's very rare, and B) you can prevent it easily by having retreat orders on your frail pretender. Or you could have him guarded.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Fine, so pick another random event that can't be defended against.

The point remains there are some of us who absolutely loathe random events and feel they happen way too often in this game.

As I said before, having to set events to rare and setting order to +3 just so I can get what I feel is a *normal* amount of random events seems very silly.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

I've found that with order 3 they are rare even with the common setting. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

Anyway, I do think something should be done to make luck a better choice, maybe making the catastrophic events misfortune only.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

I've found that with order 3, random events rare, that I get hardly any events at all. So what's "normal"? One event every 30 turns or so?

To me, the real problem with the scales as currently set up is that order is the only one with a serious effect on income. Since order 3 is therefore mandatory, you might as well mine misfortune for the points.

My preference would be to have order, productivity, and growth all have the same effect on cash - that way there might actually be variety in the scales that people chose to maximize.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I find they happen more often than once every 30 turns...more like once every 15 or so. And that would be "rare" in my mind.

But there's really no need for us to argue about it. If they would simply put in a "very rare" or even <gasp> an "off" switch for events, we could all choose whatever we liked.

Many games with random evenets allow you to turn them off entirely since it's pretty well-known that there is a sizeable chunk of gamers who detest them.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yeah, I suggested something like that in another thread - a luck system that would classify all events as major and minor, and yield an overall probability like this:

ML=major lucky event
SL=small lucky event
SU=small unlucky event
MU=major unlucky event

Luck scale values and overall event probabilities (assuming an event occurs):

Luck..ML...SL....|....SU...MU
+3......40....40....|....18....02
+2......32....39....|....26....05
+1......24....36....|....32....08
+0......15....35....|....35....15
-1.......08....32....|....36....24
-2.......05....26....|....39....32
-3.......02....18....|....40....40

So with +1 luck, only 8% of the events would by major unlucky events.

I agree that if I spend 40 points on Luck 1, I want a major reduction in barbarian invasions and vineman uprisings... but I don't really expect that to suddenly make me immune to bad weather, for example=)

-Cherry

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

I know that river provinces affect floods. And season changes affect tornados. But most of the ones people complain about seem to be the ones where a group decides to "remove your oppressive rule" or something like that. These arent affected by scales or game settings as much as by your actions apparently. High taxes, blood hunts, pillaging, Im not sure what but it appears that people bring these onto themselves by pushing too hard and too fast.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

I virtually never see random events with order 3, misfortune 3, rare events. That being the case the only drawback of misfortune is on my chance of getting hero's.

My complaint is with turmoil/luck races and how that pans out - pretty badly in my tests. So yes the bad events do seem rather devestating.

Cheers

Keir

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

It looks like there's pretty broad consensus that at least the mass-kill events (flood, emigration, probably others) should be restricted to misfortune provinces only (or should be very rare without misfortune).

Really, how many places have catastrophic flooding every year? The Nile valley and...? And the annual Nile floods didn't kill 1/4 of the population of Egypt every year, either. The only disasters I can think of with that kind of kill rate are major volcanic eruptions (Thera, Vesuvius, Krakatoa), which are once in several centuries for the whole world. Hurricanes don't kill 1/4 the population of Florida (or India). Maybe 1/10.

Now, I don't think that disasters should be eliminated from the game entirely, or even that a disaster every few years (note a year is 12 turns!) is unreasonable - for a strong misfortune scale. A God with a fortune dominion shouldn't have his people troubled with constant floods, earthquakes, barbarian incursions, gangs of troll heroes, etc. - or what use is his divine power over fortune?

So what kind of random events should be able to occur (occasionally) in a forune dominion? Poor harvests (temporary decrease in tax or supply), brigand activity, vandalism (costs gold to repair), increased unrest, superstition (decreased dominion), desertion of some normal (non-[pretender | prophet | mindless | magic | demon | undead]) troops in the province (the chance of an individual unit deserting could be based on morale), etc. One-time or temporary bad events, not permanent cripplers.

Also, there need to be more good events with better effects than the current "small amount of gold or gems". The site creation events are a nice start, but if there is a mass emigration event, why isn't there a mass immigration event, for example? Celebrants of the faith could build you a free temple. An independent mage (of some type that would normally only be recruited in a particular site, e.g. metal orders) could offer you his services.

Turmoil/luck dominions usually result in more effect from bad events than from good ones, even though there are more good events. In order to be balanced against neutral scales (given the income reduction of turmoil), turmoil/luck needs to have events be a net benefit (since luck has hardly any benefits aside from events - crossbreeding and heroes are it, IIRC). Also, misfortune needs to not be neutralized by order; it wasn't allowed in Dom I, why was that changed?

I'd just like to see the order and luck scales balanced to a point that most races could reasonably choose most combinations of those scales. It wouldn't be too bad if (as in Dom I) order/luck was usually a waste of points and turmoil/misfortune was horribly crippling but other combinations worked OK for their point costs.

Maybe order/turmoil shouldn't affect event frequency at all, but only allow/disallow certain events (volunteers for the militia or increased tax revenues would be more common in order, increased unrest, vandalism and rebellions in turmoil). Order is powerful enough for its income benefits. Anyway, I don't think an orderly population is going to be much use against a catastrophic flood.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I dont see such a "broad consensus". Most of us seem to say its working as it is. If you dont want events then dont ask for events.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Usually when I get that in a game its because the AI is casting spells at me.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Good point. These events shouldn't kill population, so much as make you temporarily lose
income. Rather like the "Good Harvest" events.
Even losing 1/10 of your population to an event is ridiculous for nearly all events.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

The dominion does not only affect the minds of people, it changes the very lands, thus more storms in a land of turmoil, more blizzards in a land of cold and more treasures found in a land of fortune.

The changes in the scales were intended to make the scale effects easy to grasp. At first each scale was to affect one area only. This was not entirely good and now growth and production do increas income for example (not as much as in Dom I though).

Luck and events have not been altered a second time. It bothers me that there is a default setting that everyone feels compulsed to use, but I'm not yet sure what should be done and what effects we wish to avoid and what to add.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">A valid point when you consider that we at Illwinter are opposed to ridiculous population growth http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Who asked for events? With Order +1 and events at *rare*, I'm still getting at least a brigand lair a year. Sometimes I'll get an event every month....at "rare," that just seems to me absurd.

IMO you shouldn't have to set a scale at 3 to have events actually be rare....that's presumably what the setting is for.

Again, I see nothing wrong with introducing an additional setting. Those of you happy with the way things are don't have to use it.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

>It bothers me that there is a default setting that everyone feels compulsed to use, but I'm not yet sure what should be done and what effects we wish to avoid and what to add.

Trying to fidget the system might be difficult from your perspective. I suggest doing work on mod tools. Given a chance the players will create mods galore. These would be put through much more intensive playtesting than you would normally get in house, and if it is poor you get no blame, only credit for releasing the tools. With many well tested mods out there, most players will be satisfied.

There are many disturbingly dedicated players like Gandalf, Saber Cherry, and myself, who will gladly do the work and take the heat... if you get us ANY significant tools to work with.

If we could edit- Scales, Units (including pretenders), Nations, Spells, and Forts, we could produce a beautiful supply of new content. More content would help sell your core game. I don't see any downside.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There are no downsides and the modding tools exist. They are just not released yet. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

As of yet the mod tools are rather simple. For example: Scales can be altered to have higher or lower effects, but unless we reinsert an effect on luck affecting the number of events occuring you will not be able to change that aspect of the events. More moddable variables are of course better, but it might take more work to implement.

The first nation modding beta was finished by JK today. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif The tools will now be tested for a while.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

>There are no downsides and the modding tools exist. They are just not released yet.

Excellent! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif


>The first nation modding beta was finished by JK today. The tools will now be tested for a while.

As always, if you need help testing, let me know, as I'd be glad to help.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm sure you are http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif , but I think our Shrapnel group is supposed to do the testing. Thanks anyway!

Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

I just played 3 games in a row where a large random event just lost me the game before turn 10.

I would like to see the larger bad random events limited to Misfortune 3 and scale them down from there. I don't like losseing 1/4 of my capitals population on turn 3 with luck 1. I want to win or loose the game based on how well I played not a roll of the dice.

Sammual

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Disturbingly dedicated? heehee.

Actually Ive always been against mods that change how a game plays. Im more in favor of external additions. Exporting more data, more command line switches, adding more commands for .map files, third party software.

[ November 23, 2003, 01:19: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

Umh, I am bringing up an old thread, but what about that:

Include an option that sets luck initially to +3 in a players capitial province, regardless of his dominion scales?

If a player has choosen misfortune, the scale will certainly drop back to it within ~10 turns, but it might protect everybody from severe disasters in their home provinces (only) in the beginning!

I am fine with the random events as they are, but given the importance of your starting province, loosing half of your population, a burned-down lab or a temple swallowed by an earthquake in the first three turns _is_ devastating a multiplayer game - and it still happened to me in V2.08 with Order+3, Luck+0... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Random events for non-home provinces are ok as they are, imho, and they are ok later on when the game is going, but I think that they are not ok within the first few turns in the captial province! It simply ruins a multiplayer game based on strategy.

I know that this point is controversial, hence I am only asking for an option, which might be easy to implement, as it works similar to spells like "WolvenWinter" (Although I have no real ideas about the difficulty of that.)

[ March 24, 2004, 10:44: Message edited by: Chazar ]

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">...Check the date of Raen's post. Remembering details of four months' old games is not all that common. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

Um ok this thread is 4 months old, but since it is here....

Those suggestions for the Luck scales that Saber Cherry spelled out in that post back there --- they seem *very* reasonable to me. They werent really commented here.
Does anybody feel that his/her (which?) suggestions would *not* be good? I would surely like to see something like this, even though I disagree that "random events are unbalanced".
If I gather correctly, Saber Cherry seems to have some sort of authoratitive role here -- have the Developers commented upon his/her suggestions? I mean, Luck/Order *was* retooled slightly in the Last patch, but that was also 3 months after the suggestions were given. Any news since then?
merci

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

Im playing a game misfortune 3 and order 3 right now. In the beginning it was VERY hard, but now it becomes less important if a provine is raided. But early on bad luck can prove to be a challenge, if not even the defeat.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

Getting one's temple destroyed on the second turn of an MP with 3 order is not a pleasant experience. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

Heh - when the temple in my capital got knocked down by an earthquake on about turn 10, I got pretty upset and wondered if it happened to anyone else (2.08, order 1, luck 0, events set to rare). Now I know.

I haven't given up, but by golly it's not easy. My prophet is my only remaining priest, and if he dies I will have real difficulty building any temples. At the moment my upkeep is preventing me having 200 to spare for a temple ...

I can appreciate the complexity of balancing the effects of the Order/Chaos and Luck/Misfortune scales ... but I fully support the idea of an Off switch for having no events at all.

CC

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

Didn't even look at that, Peter http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Part of the point, however, is if he is attempting to use the Order 3/Misfortune 3, and he's complaining about bad events, we have an issue. I did try to raise generally useful questions on the topic. I guess that was my main point.

Wyatt

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Heh. In my Last MP game as Pangaea (based on the free Maenad principle http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ), I got no random events round 1 & 2, then
#3 Young rebels started creating unrest: My home province rose to 58 unrest from 0 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif
#5 A flood wiped out 25% of the population of my second province conquered in turn 4
#7 Home temple destroyed by earthquake

As the map had independents 9, that set back my expansion by 5-8 rounds compared to the opposition as I had virtually no income.

The settings? Turmoil 3, Sloth 3, Heat 0, Growth 0, Luck 3, Magic 3..... I guess I was begging for it with the turmoil and sloth scales, but I sure as hell did not feel lucky - and I might have been luckier (i.e. fewer random events) with luck 0. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

It took over 30 turns before I got a +gold event.

Remember the "luck" blurb in the dominion scales? Seldom has a description of an ability been so thoroughly misleading:
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">"Good events are common, and no one seems to have any bad luck"? Propaganda without ANY base in gameplay, I am sorry to say. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ March 24, 2004, 17:13: Message edited by: Peter Ebbesen ]

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

*shrug* Just wait until you get the Ancient Presence event in your capital -- it kills pretty much everybody, turns them into plant beings, and provides (IIRC) an astral/death/nature undead plant-thingy to lead them. Even after you take it back, that province still is radically depopulated.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

I don't know if it's a combination of other scales causing it, or just my good luck or the complaining people's bad luck, but my positive-Luck games have been pretty lucky. No major bad events to my important provinces inside the luck aura, and nice positive events.

PvK

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

The imbalance with events as I see it is that the bad events are much more damaging than the good events are beneficial, so even if you have equal numbers of both, you're still much worse off.

In my current game with Turmoil -1, Luck 0, I usually see several events per turn. At best, the good events give me a few gems, some gold, or maybe a new temple or some militia somewhere. I've never seen anything better than those, at all. The bad events, on the other hand, regularly destroy a sizeable fraction of a province population (permanently!), attack a province with a sizeable independent force, or creates a brigand lair that permanently generates unrest in the province. I've seen all those things multiple times, sometimes more than once in the same turn.

Those good things just don't come close to balancing out the bad ones. That means that those who take order 3, misfortune -3 will get very few good events, but it will hardly matter: the good events just aren't that beneficial, and overall with order 3, Misfortune -1, they probably will *still* get less overall bad events than I do with turmoil -1, luck 0.

I liked Saber Cherry's idea of events getting categorized into major/minor classes. I would add a suggestion to that to make sure that the good major events were as good to have as the bad major events are bad to have. (ie: an event that doubles your population should be just as possible as the 1/2 population death event. (Note that to the the fair inverse of the 1/2 pop death, it needs to be a doubling, not a 50% pop gain.))

-LintMan

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">YES!! This is exactly my problem with the event system. The good events dont compare at all the bad events in terms of severity, especially the population gain/loss ones.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">YES!! This is exactly my problem with the event system. The good events dont compare at all the bad events in terms of severity, especially the population gain/loss ones. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It depends... A lot of the good events are very significant too. Getting a hero is a big boost to some of the nations. You could sometimes get a random Lore Master, Animist or a Stalker (ethereal assasains). If you got lucky, you might get a Ring of Wizardary or Soul Contract from the item events - it did happen. I think the 1500 gold event only happens at Luck+3, but that's equivalent to the income of 3 to 4 turns (plus an item). You can sometimes get permanent increase of resource, gold income and gain an Earth gem site. If you're lucky enough to have a castle in the right province, it'll be 300 or 450 gold saved.

Getting a population loss event is depressing but on the other hand, it doesn't always hit your important provinces.

I don't know. So far, most of the judgement on the lucky event being too insignificant or the unlucky event being too harsh are very subjective. Can anybody suggest a more accurate measurement of their effects?

Unless there is a mirror image between the good and bad events, I don't know how you can balance the good and bad events out.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

Well, I don't want to sound like there's an easy answer to this question, but maybe something to consider for the population events is to change them to fixed amounts. Starting provinces start with roughly 30,000 people, AFAICT. If you made pop. destroying events kill 3000 people instead of 1/4, then the effect on capital provinces would be far less. However, on small provinces, the population might be completely wiped out or reduced by half. This would address the problem of early events severely hampering performance in MP games.

Bayushi Tasogare

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

I'd suggest that a fortress in a province should provide some measure of protection against bad events. It would obviously be more difficult for bandits etc to get a foothold in a fortified province, and a fortress could be used as a place of shelter in the event of flood, famine or blizzard. You can't pillage a province with a fortress in it, after all.

This would also open up a new strategy of taking misfortune and a cheap fortress type to 'cope' with the bad luck.

[ March 24, 2004, 23:54: Message edited by: Sandman ]

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

Couple of questions for Raen.

What is your Luck level? I hear you are taking Order>1, but you aren't mentioning your luck scales (or I haven't noticed). My question about the 'brigand lair a year' phenomenon is to ask how many negative events should you be getting.

Second point, how many Provinces do you control? If you have many, many provinces, you'll get more events, simply due to events checking in each province (as I believe they do).

As a real world example, do you know how many (admittedly minor) geological events go on in the world _every day_?

10's to 100's (I'm talking earthquakes and active volcanoes, btw).

Toning down the events could be interesting, certainly... but if you are playing, e.g., on a huge map (say Orania) with few opponents and Misfortune 3 (for example), I think it's entirely accurate that you have a brigand uprising once a year _somewhere_ in your kingdom.

Just makes sense to me.

Wyatt

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, you didn't pay for a luck scale, so you can't expect to get good events any more often than the bad ones.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That's is extremely unlikely, since they will get only 5% fewer events than you will, and 80% of the events they do get will be bad events. They could expect that about a quarter of their games will be severely impacted in the first 10 turns by their scale choice, and they will have to continually deal with random attacks on their provinces. You get 5% more events in total, and only 50% of them will be bad. You also have 40 more nation points than they do to work with, so you can't expect yourself to benefit as much from the scales as they do.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">They already are, and always have been classified as such. This is an _old_ thread, and much of the information is not correct. It dates back to considerably before the first patch was even released.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, you didn't pay for a luck scale, so you can't expect to get good events any more often than the bad ones.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm not saying that I expected to get any *more* good events than bad events. What I was saying was that the *negative impact* of the bad events was stronger than the *positive impact* of the good events, so that the *net impact* of Luck 0 was overall negative.

Intuitively, I would expect that at Luck 0, over the long run, you'd more or less expect to pretty much break even on good things vs bad things happening to you; the good outcomes would more or less offset the bad ones, and the bad outcomes would more or less offset the good ones.

I'm not talking about the number of good vs bad events, but the effects of those events.

As an exagerated example, lets say I played 10 hands of poker at a casino, and tell you I won 5 and lost 5 hands. You say "So you broke even, then?", and I say "No, I lost $750: on the hands I won, I got $50 each time, but on the hands I lost, I lost $150 each time". That's sort of what Luck 0 feels like to me: about even numbers of $50 wins and $150 losses.

This is all subjective, of course, but I've seen posters in other threads make similar comments, so I don't think it's just me.

(Note: I don't expect things to work out perfectly evenly, but it's not even close. At luck 0, I'm seeing what I'd consider major misfortune events *regularly*, while I've yet to see even a single lucky event of the same magnitude.)

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That's is extremely unlikely, since they will get only 5% fewer events than you will, and 80% of the events they do get will be bad events. They could expect that about a quarter of their games will be severely impacted in the first 10 turns by their scale choice, and they will have to continually deal with random attacks on their provinces. You get 5% more events in total, and only 50% of them will be bad. You also have 40 more nation points than they do to work with, so you can't expect yourself to benefit as much from the scales as they do.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Four steps on the order/turmoil scale only amounts to a 5% difference in number of events? So for my 100 events at turmoil 1, they'd have 95 at order 3?

I'm no expert, but from the postings I've read on these forums, I'd gathered that order had a much stronger effect on events than that. (I'd also gathered that Order 3/Misfortune -3 was a fairly common choice among players, with the misfortune paying for the order benefits, while the order scale reducing the misfortune pains).

Is there anyplace that explains the current system of how the luck/order scales tie into events? I searched and found a lengthy thread from January, but didn't see any exact descriptions of the way it works.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">They already are, and always have been classified as such. This is an _old_ thread, and much of the information is not correct. It dates back to considerably before the first patch was even released. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Doh!

Even so, my suggestion that the good events should be as good as the bad events are bad still holds. My suspicion is that if you compared good and bad events side by side, either the good events will look fairly pale in comparison to the bad ones, or some bad events that I consider "major" are actually getting classed as "minor" ones.

-LintMan

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Sure. But it's overall negative for just about everybody since everyone has a similar set of events to draw from.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">(Mis)fortune affects event frequency by 5% per step.
Order/Turmoil affects event frequency by 5% per step.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Order 3 misfortune 3 is asking to have your game plan ruined by negative events. If you want to test it, you have to consider that a MP game doesn't usually start over if your temple is destroyed on turn two.

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I do not feel this is the case. But I may not be the majority. Previously to Patch 2.08 you may have been correct. There was no reason not to take Order 3/Misfortune 3 because it was free 21% Income increase with no real drawback.

However now that the scales have been modified I can only think of one game I have played since then that I have dared take Misfortune 3 while trying to compete. And I was burned by it.

That isn't to say I take more Turmoil than I ever did (since the only times I play Turmoil are for the hell of it, trying ideas, not with any serious intention) but that I tend to think of the Luck scale less on it's coupling with Order, but more on it's own merit and what level and frequency of events I am trying to avoid/gain.

Order3/Misfortune3 can still work like it used to, due to the factors of luck in general. But that is part of the game, if you play with Luck you tend to play with the dice. Sometimes it likes you even when you are playing Misfortune and other times it hates you even if you are playing Luck.

[ March 25, 2004, 06:30: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

Hmm, the discussion seems to go back to its former topic... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif which was not my intention when I brought it up again:

I know that random events are controversial, and I dont see that there is even necessity to agree upon that! All I was asking for is whether there are more people like me who like severe random events after turn 10, say, but not before turn 10...

Of course, I can avoid the impact of early random events by setting a high number of starting provinces, but this is also a slight disadvantage for research-based strategies...

[ March 25, 2004, 09:37: Message edited by: Chazar ]

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Which is my major issue. 120 points is a LOT to invest in a scale in return for something that makes you a bit luckier on average in the NUMBER of lucky to unlucky events while still hitting you with extremely unfortunate random events every now and again. It certainly does not fit with the description of a land with a high luck scale: "Good events are common, and no one seems to have any bad luck". I can assure you that flooding, brigandry, and violent earthquakes feel like bad luck to most of the population http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Make luck 3 have 0% chance of major bad events and an exceedingly low probability of minor bad events, that's what I say. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif


On a related issue, it seems from a limited amount of tests that the number of random events per turn is limited to 3? (a small number, at any rate) no matter how large the country is? If that is true, it certainly favours misfortune over luck, as the worst misfortune events are those that affect single provinces, and the more provinces you have, the greater chance that a poor irrelevant one is targeted, while the best luck events are those that give gold and/or gems, which are not tied to specific provinces and which lose relative value the longer you play. In other words, the larger the country, the less negative effect from choosing misfortune and the less positive effect from choosing luck.... That just seems so.. wrong.

I hope I am mistaken on this issue.

[ March 25, 2004, 10:07: Message edited by: Peter Ebbesen ]

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

Actually the *best* Luck event is the one that adds population to a province. Unfortunately it appears to be tied to Order scale, and is already rare... meaning you're not very likely to see it at all. IMO, that event should be at least as common under high order as the "restless population" even is under turmoil (ie very frequent).

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I am pretty sure that I have read it somewhere here in this forum that the number of random events per player is limited to 3, but I dont know where. Nevertheless I am happy that way... :-)

Re: Big Problem - Unbalanced random events
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I must disagree. It takes an awful number of rounds for a population boost to generate more money that the +500 gold event (and three times as many to beat the +1500 gold). Of course, there is the added impact on resources, the utility of which is highly dependent on exactly which province is targeted.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Which is where we part company. To my mind, bad events should not be very frequent under turmoil IF your domian is lucky.