Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

(Mis)fortune affects event frequency with 5% per step.
Order/Turmoil affects event frequency with 5% per step.

+3 Luck / 0 Order is more viable since you get an increased frequency of events without taking Turmoil http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

+3 Order / -3 Luck is now dangerous to take http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

However, the Order scale is still too powerful compared to all the others. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

It should be reduced to +/- 5% gold. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

Catquiet,

The order scale does have a built-in negative. But only folks inclined to take luck will experience it....

It reduces the benefit of positive luck! The lower overall event frequency is the price you pay for taking order.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

Just ran a few hundred rounds of luck testing.

Results look very similar to Last Version.
Turmoil-3 is a killer.
Order-3 Misfortune-3 provides slightly less income than O-3 L-3 but nets you a ton of nation points.


I don't think this adjustment does much to address the issues.

A better method would be to remove the more dire events. There aren't corresponding good events. Plus nobody likes them. They do nothing to help the game, and they are unbalancing the luck/order scales.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

Apoger,

Can you tell me what you are doing to test it?

Are you playing with common or rare events?

And how much territory do you control. I never seem to have much problem with unluck until I get a decent sized empire, then it becomes like a death scale with all the horrible random disasters.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No, they could just be restricted to -2 and -3 luck provinces. No reason to eliminate them. -2 and -3 luck need to be made worse or I'll keep choosing them every time for every nation.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">So your solution to misfortune being a no brainer is making it better?

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I take it you would prefer to leave misfortune without effect so you could have high incomes and many events that are mainly good http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

IMHO luck is now a beautiful thing. I have run 10 turns of a test using Order 1, Luck 3. In those 10 turns I have had: The province defense of my capital increased by 10. A 100 gold event. A 500 gold event. A set of militia join. A group of immigrants increase the pop of one of my provinces by 25%. No negative events yet.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't understand this. There *are* corresponding good events. And removing the dire events would increase the incentive to take misfortune 3, further unbalancing the luck/order scales, not helping to balance them.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

I tested for only 20 turns, both Order+3/Luck-3 and Chao-3/Luck+3 were killers. I have only the capital and the population in both case was decrease to 20k by random events. Two babarians (in one turn!) for the Order, one emigration and one plague for the Luck.

I didn't do any recruiting and let the gold accumulate (the upkeep is similar for both). Overall, the Luck nation has more gold left in the treasury, some random gems and a minor items.

In this case, Order might give you comfort for having a larger income - but I'm not totally sure it has the edge.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

Wow, I was testing luck 3, chaos 3 with Abysia... 2 good events until turn 6, then on turn 7 I got a magic item, hero, celebrant, AND... 1/4 of my population died from rain. So far, not good at all.

..then a witch cursed some units, then a quake destroyed the temple (by turn 19).

[ January 12, 2004, 18:25: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

I am a bit with apoger on this one, Kristoffer.

I wouldn't mind if the events were very bad, such as loss of half your tax revenues for the turn or something like that. Even a single-time loss of 500 (if you have 500 more than troop cost) would be ok with me. Because that corresponds to a good event. I think to some folks, "balancing" these scales would mean that for every bad event that can happen to you at luck-0, there is a corresponding good event that is equal in benefit to the detriment of the bad event and equal in permanence to the permanence of the bad event (and vice versa).

Maybe you lose 100 gp, some gems, and a magical item. Or you lose your best item in the lab.

All of my suggestions have one thing in common: they are very temporary. It's nothing you can't recover from. You haven't lost 1/4 your population in your home province due to flooding.

An alternate idea would be to let your luck scale affect where a bad event occurs or the extent of the bad event. Example: Unless you are -3 luck, you can't have a population loss event in the most populous 20% of your provinces. Unless you have -2 or worse luck, Bogus the Troll, if he comes, won't come on top of your largest army or in your most "valuable" 20% of provinces.

I think what has a lot of folks "turned off" to luck is that even with beneficial luck scales some really horrible events occur. And luck costs a lot of nation points. So you sort of figure you've bought some sort of "insurance" at a price and then something really bad happens and you get unhappy about it. On the other hand, if you took misfortune and got those 120 points from luck-0, you figure that you deserve for things like that to happen to you in your game. Or maybe that's just me.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

OK, on turn 45 Abysia (Luck Turmoil) had the ancient presence event. Even though hundreds of militia had joined my army and the province defense had been boosted 3 times to 55 (HUGE defending army of abyssians, humanbreds, and militia) the invading mandragoras won and captured the capitol. And of course the population was reduced to 1000.

Atlantis (Misfortune Order) had fewer events, no major bad ones, and was much better off. Population was still 30K (rather than Abysia's 22k and later 1k), gold in the bank was 6.1k (abysia has 1.9k), and they had still gotten 14 random gems rather than Abysia's 69 random gems.

In conclusion:

Unless positive luck scales are immune (or highly resistant) to major negatives, I think turmoil-luck is too unsafe to consider except for Ermor / Pangaea.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Witch cursing some units is a mixed event. You get gems out of it.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes - the problem with paying for good luck is that you still have bad luck. If I pay for a lucky domain, I don't expect my capitol to collapse from bad luck without any enemy action http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif I'd pay for good luck if it protected me from that sort of thing, but I suspect that turmoil/luck has more catastrophies than order/misfortune... I just can't analyze it for certain because I don't understand how the luck percentages work.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

SaberCherry,

It may be that as an underwater nation Atlantis was immune to flooding.

The ancient presence event may require magic scales. I find that a number of unlucky events are averted by taking no magic or drain in your scales.

Of course, I'm still a relative novice at the game compared to most of you.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

>Can you tell me what you are doing to test it?

I make a set of pretenders, 3 with Order-3 luck-3, 3 with Order-3 Luck-0, 3 with Order-3 Misfortune-3, ect... all the combos.

Then I make a game with a bunch of these gods.
I set the starting army/pretender on patrol (undoes unrest, defends versus random attacks).
I name a prophet.
Then I host 15,30, and 60 turns.
At each stop I note the population, income, and treasury. On turn 60 I also check for items, and heros.

It's not conculsive, and yes having extra territory would help, but it gives me a good idea of what will happen.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

>So your solution to misfortune being a no brainer is making it better?

>I take it you would prefer to leave misfortune without effect so you could have high incomes and many events that are mainly good


No, but I see luck/misfortune differently than you guys.

Good Event: Gain a lab
Bad Event: Lose lab

On the surface these look equal and symetric.
However the lost lab will often happen at a protected location where mages are being produced and research is being done. The gained lab occurs at a random spot that is vastly less likey to be helpful. Effectively, losing a lab is much more hurtful than gaining a lab is helpful. The luck tables you are using don't account for this at all, and this skews things towards bad luck.

Furthermore there are events like losing 1/3 of a population or being attacked by powerful armies. These events are much worse and more common, than their opposite effects.


Honestly, we could agrue forever about this.
What I'll do is play with the mod tools and see if I can make a formula that make me happy. That way everyone wins. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

I agree, apoger. And it will be nice if the mod tools eventually let you decide how to limit the unlucky and lucky events.

And just in real estate, it's all about location, location, location with regard to luck and unluck events.

If you were really "lucky," that new lab would be discovered at a location where it will enable you to recruit a new type of mage that you don't already have access to. (Early in the game, it might be in a druid province.) Location is an element of luck that isn't affected by the scales. For instance, the Bogus event is supposed to be unlucky, but if it happens in the one border province you share with a mighty nation that just declared war on you, then maybe it's not such a bad event after all.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

Has anyone gotten heroes with -2 luck? I don't seem to, even though folks say you are supposed to. I just figured I'd ask since folks are doing lots of tests right now.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">In Dom 1, I heard that you don't get any below luck -1. Some people said luck -2 is the limit in Dom 2. I don't know.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

Population loss events should kill a set number of people. Multiplied by Misfortune or divided by Fortune.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The same can be said for the unlucky events though. Losing 1/4 of population in the mostly unpopulated mountain province is not significant neither. When your Kingdom get bigger, those population event is less likely to hit home.

But as you said, just have numbers that everybody agreed beforehand. They're now mostly modifiable now.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

Alex, that is not a very deterministic test.

Luck is modified by terrain. If you wanted to do a realistic test, try getting one of each base type of province (1 Forest, 1 Coast/Riverland, 1 Mountain, 1 Barren/Desert).

Then test.

Then you can more accurately judge the effects of both luck and unluck. Just doing a home province test is more like shooting in the barrel. Because if one of your 'testers' is on a river province/coastline and the other is not, suddenly that coastal province has terrible luck no matter what because it gets hit by flood/hurricanes while the mountain province gets 'good' events like mines.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ouch. Feel free to use the mini map for that. The game doesnt really care what the TGA says so editing the terrains in the .map file would be fast and easy.
http://www.techno-mage.com/~dominion...ions2/Mini.tga
http://www.techno-mage.com/~dominion...ions2/Mini.map

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

I got one very interesting lucky event in my test. Basically, it adds another site to the province "The Deepest Cave" that give 1 earth gem per turn. And because of that, I need to fight off a small Troglydate (that trampling underground thing) army.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

I think a real test would be to control the entire world except for about 5 provinces (the same ones in each case) and let it run for about 30 or so turns.

Large numbers of provinces seem to dramatically increase the number of events.

The most positive thing about bad luck is that its worst effects are usually delayed until you are winning.

But not always. I've lost my lab in my home province on turn 6 or so if memory serves, and I've had that horrible flood event early on also.

I don't even want to think about ancient presence in the home province. I haven't had that one yet, and I wager it is linked to a positive magic scale, which I seem to seldom use. Drain isn't that hard to overcome if you put a bit of death magic on your pretender. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

There is a maximum of 3 Events per turn, so having more than say 10 or so doesn't dramatically increase the frequency.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

I'm suffering from hay fever so my brain is not working particularily well but here is my two cents (I'll spend a dollar later):

As I remember the old system was order adjusted event frequency by +-10% and luck adjusted the likelyhood of a good/bad event by +-10%.

Turmoil3/luck3 - nothing has changed has it? You get +30% on event frequency and +30% on likelyhood they are good.

Misfortune3/order3 - you now have the normal chance of events instead of -30% and there is a modifier of+30% on the chance they will be bad. Eeeck. I got hit by an earthquake second or third turn with Mictlan Last night and I didn't like it. This is not the sort of thing I want to increase the likelyhood for MP so I'm wary of this choice. Over an empire it could be disastrous and I'm not sure tests on one province mean very much because of this.

Order3/luck0 - chance of events has gone up by+15% as orders event supression has become less effective. Weaker than it used to be but more likely to be chosen.

Order0/luck3 - this has got heaps better with an extra +15% chance of events.

Order3/luck3 - this has got better but it still doesn't appeal much due to the cost and order working against the luck.

Of course more subtle options exist but thats a useful bunch to look at.

Cheap order options have got weaker, order0+ and luck stronger (should be its expensive), and turmoil/luck stayed the same. In general I think we can safely say that races in general have got weaker and so the ones who have stayed the same have got better.

Not what I was hoping for but its more balenced. I had already accepted that my order based dual bless effects races, milking misfortune for free points, were history (one or two of the best might survive without misfortune) so thats not to sad. I'm a bit dissapointed that turmoil/luck races haven't had more of a boost as I was hoping for more possibilities there to make up the loses. I'm not sure we have gained as much as we have lost in terms of race design options. Still need to have a better look.

I never felt returning to the old scales was THE answer but it could be part of the answer if high luck could guard you from devesating events - at least in your capital.

Cheers

Keir

[ January 13, 2004, 00:08: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

I'm hoping that they will eventually let us mod the events. I can come up with events of my own, and I might produce a Survivalist Mod of just the luck scale and events that folks might decide they like enough to use. I think it would be fun. And I would limit the worst catastrophes to misfortune 3 such that those who want to reap points out of misfortune would want to stop at 2.

I would also generally mod up the national heroes...say double their hps and increase their defense and protection. So that luck would be desirable to get the heroes faster. As things stand now, some races get a lot more out of their heroes than others, making losing the heroes something some races can do rather cavalierly. I think that, while some heroes should be more powerful than others, even race by race, the heroes should be good enough that no race would cavalierly cast them aside but would rather realize they are making a choice with positive and negative consequences.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

I agree the Order scale balance is better, but still off. I actually think Luck is ok now compared to the scales other than Order; bad events are still effectively more prevalent than good ones, but that just shifts the scale so it's not zero centered.

Drop Order's economic effect down to to perhaps +/- 5% and I think it'd be fine. As it stands now Order is IMHO still clearly the "must have" thing to spend points on.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

I actually think that the scales could be made such that the points which they either cost or produce are non-linear.

Turmoil could give more nation points than order costs. And the third order could be made more expensive. I guess that each person has a break-even point for all the scales.

The only thing is that not everyone's break-even point is the same. I like order and misfortune. So if I mod the scales, I might make order cost more, turmoil give more nation points, luck cost less, the heroes more powerful, and misfortune give fewer nation points. Just a thought. I'm not even sure you can mod them in this way.

My feeling is that the scales need not be balanced with respect to one another, only with respect to the total nation points they yeild.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Don't think so. You can mod the effect of a scale upon the attribute of the game that it presently modifiers - ie reduce order to 5% extra tax.

I will be sticking with the existing scales structure for the War of the Ring mod - there will be enough to get used to without complicating ones understanding of race design and its impacts. I have no objection to mods that alter the existing game balence but I don't want to move that way until I have a far better understanding of dom2 than I presently do. The different but similar relationship to Dom1 have made it quite tricky for me to get a good feel as many dom1 reflexes remain.

Cheers

Keir

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

I think the main issue, for me, is that the person taking Luck is not significantly luckier than the person taking Misfortune, because of the actual events.

I now agree with whoever-it-was that said that it's the events themselves, rather than the scales, that need the most attention (or words to that effect).

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

Zapmeister,

I think I was one of the folks who said that a while back. But I am probably not the only one to reach that conclusion.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

I believe alot of the supposed 'imbalance' could be cleaned up with a reweighting of the luck scale. Or some sort of additive effect with it.

The main complaint, that I can see is the long term detriment of a bad event vs the 'instant gratification' of the good event.

Change the 1/4 population bad event to a single -500 gold, -250 Production event in tune with the corresponding good event and you more than likely wouldn't see it as a target for comparison.

If it's possible, bumping the population cutting event to +2 Luck and below and adding in a one shot -gold -resource event would more than likely calm a bit of the 'bad events are bad' talk.

Truth be told I prefer this way. It balances out some of the Turmoil nations so they are more feasible while not hurting any of the Order gold and making them pay for it with misfortune.

Maybe if some of the events were not so terrain regulated and finding a gold or iron mine in a valley or a barren it might take off some of the edge.

My choice of taking Order/Misfortune has not changed, I am more likely to do so, but I no longer groan at the thought of taking a forced Turmoil theme/nation.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

Zen,

My understanding of the 500 gold event is that it is limited to luck +3 or is that not correct?

My least favorite event is actually the barbarian pillage, though it is less devastating than loss of 1/4 or 1/3 population in an unlucky disaster. They are quite common in my territory late in the game. I will sometimes get up to two a turn. I don't mind the knights as much as the barbarians.

The barbarians get to pillage even if they don't win the battle. And they attack civilized areas out of nowhere. It would be nice if (1) no pillaging if they don't win and (2) they can only attack within 2 provinces of (a) an independent province or (b) a province of a nation that has some sort of barbarian theme to it.

All these barbarians coming out of the woodwork in the middle of my order+3 empire in provinces with > 10 provincial defense that have the religious accoutrements of civilization (temples) just doesn't strike me as right. But maybe my imagination is warped in this regard.

Changing that to a knight attack under those circumstances, with no permanent population loss, though they are harder to defeat, would seem more reasonable to me. Knights are civilized. And nobles can rebel and have political disagreements with their overlords.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Playing as R'yleh I received this event on turn 4 at luck+2. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

Does anyone know how the various mages who can avert bad events work? Is there just some sort of percentage such an event is averted if there is a mage in the province? Does it scale with more mages? What are the percentages? Can you tell when misfortune has been averted? etc.

Also, which factions have such mages? I know of at least Midgard, Utgard, and Black Forest.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

Two questions involving luck and modding.

#1 Luck scale changes the frequency of events. Right now by 5% per level of scale. I have seen people state that this means that misfortune raises the chances of events and luck supresses. Is this correct? Or is this 5% a positive modifier in both directions? If it isn't a positive modifier in both directions, is there anyway to mod the scale so it can be?

#2 Luck scales currently affect quantity and quality of events. Some players have suggested adding economic modifiers to luck. I'd like to do some experimenting with such ideas (and other scale effects that are non-standard). Is there anyway to do this? Or are we locked into what the scales affect, and only have the ability to wiggle the percentages?


Ok how about a third question that's about mods, but a shard off topic.

#3 The mod tools seems to allow the adjustment of scales via overall numbers that get applied across the board. It has been suggested that it might be good to have the scales ramp up in effect, I.E. instead of Order being a 7% adjustment per level of scale, possibly make it +7% for +1, +12% for +2, and +17 for +3. I am totally unsure if this is a balanced approach, however I want to know if it's even possible to experiment with.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

Apoger, I'm not sure, but my belief is that taking any luck scale (in either direction) will increase the frequency of events.

I can't answer your second question.

I like your idea of non-linearity of benefit with the order scale. I find that I take order as much to get rid of those horrible random events as I do to get income out of it. I think I would take order if it were 3% income per tick but -10% random events per tick.

Arryn, that is very good to know. If only the worst events could be limited to very low luck scale as some of the positive events are limited to positive luck scale. Does it come with 250 production points in that province? Or did Zen come up with the 250 production on his own?

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

Hmmm, did 4 quick tests, just idling in the capital and generating turns. Settings were Growth+3, Turmoil+3, Luck+3, rest flat, events common.

After 40 turns I had between 11k and 18k pop left. So it seems if you're trying to maximize the frequency and quality of events, you have to accept a death scale like... +15?

Cool! From now on, I think I'll stick with Death+3 with this kind of setup. At least I might get a huge number of death gems from events and from Raven Feast, and summon a bunch of Mound Fiends to raise the biggest army of soulless ever. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Playing as R'yleh I received this event on turn 4 at luck+2. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The 1500 Great Treasure event is supposed to be limited to Luck +3. I'm not sure whether I've seen it. But is there a 1000 gold event also?

I have also the suspicision some other very nice event might also be luck related. For example, the deepest cave event that give you an additional gem site...

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Most events are limited by scale settings. The big barbarian horde requires misfortune 3. Knights misfortune 2. Barbarians unluck 1. If you get one of these events with a neutral or positive luck scale it is a bug.

Other attacks require magic scales or other special settings such as death for the necromancer, growth for the druid etc.

The plague is rare when you have death 1 and common if you have death 3. Famine likewise at 0 and 2 death.

Emmigration (pop moves to a neighboring province) needs turmoil 2 as a common event and 0 as a rare event.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

An enormously wealthy prince dies in your land. Req death 3 luck 2. 1000 gold and magic items.

Fugitive from elludia order 2 magic 2.

Oleg's alchemical device prod 2 magic 2.

Caspar of the cave luck 2 magic 2.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I've gotten this event (as Utgard) with Order +1. Is this a bug?

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

I don't know if it is limited to Luck 3, but I believe it is luck 2 (Don't quote me on it).

Kriss cleared up some of the requirements as you can see http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

The Barbarian Horde is less of an issue to me for the most part, because if it happens to hit your Capital then 99% of the time you will fend it off (The Horde isn't too strong) and not lose too many patrollers. And if it hits a non-production province it's not really that much of an issue to go get it back.

I would like the horde to get stronger as the game progresses http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Just to tell you how I feel about bad events, the same way I'd like the lucky ones to get stronger (Militia/Flags) to represent some of the power struggle and usefulness/detriment as the game progresses.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I've gotten this event (as Utgard) with Order +1. Is this a bug? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Sorry, I missed the unrest related Version of the event. If unrest is 20+ it is common to get this event unless you have order 3.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I've gotten this event (as Utgard) with Order +1. Is this a bug? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Sorry, I missed the unrest related Version of the event. If unrest is 20+ it is common to get this event unless you have order 3. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Thanks!!! That is extraordinarily useful to know. I've been ignoring unrest unless it hits 80+. Ouch. No wonder I see it so often ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

Kristoffer,

Thank you again for clearing up things like this. These things are very helpful to know.

I think you folks have made an amazing game, and I don't want to seem petulent or like someone who is constantly complaining by continuing the luck/order discussion. I hope I'm not coming across that way.

Zen,

The barbarian pillage events pillage your province even if you win the battle. So they fall into the Category of permanent population loss.

I have recently been tinkering with misfortune 2 instead of 3. I have yet to end up with a hero on misfortune 2. But fewer great barbarian hordes are a definite plus.

It would be interesting for someone to calculate the death scale equivalent of the various luck/order settings. I think these tests will demonstrate that population loss luck events may well have more (generally negative) effect on your population than death scale does, regardless of your scales. The death scale effects can be calculated by multiplication.

I agree with you, Zen, that the horde should get stronger as the game progresses. But it shouldn't materialize out of nowhere in the middle of your civilized empire. Of course, that's just my opinion. And it shouldn't get to pillage unless it wins. Which it will probably do if it's strong unless it lands on top of a large army.

Arryn,

I have gotten this event with order +3. But it may be that what is checked is the scale of the province, not the scale of the pretender.

Re: Luck/Order scales after 2.06 Patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think I saw this when my god was Order 3, Magic 0. I didn't check the scale of the land though...