Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

Well for me at least, and with some tests under my belt.

Would like to hear your opinion, is the 2.06 tweak sufficient for you?

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

I've had mixed results with it. In the first two games, the lab in my home province was destroyed on turn 2 and one fourth my population died on turn 3. No good events through turn 10. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif Lost both of those games quickly. I'm on my third game, turn 39, and have lost a temple, 3 provinces have lost population, and have had 4 provinces taken over by large barbarian armies. OTH, I've received lots of zealots, province defense improvements and magic gems. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Leadman

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Same here, but on the whole the advantages still outweight the disadvantages by a good margin.

OTOH Luck+3 without Order is still a good recipe for catastrophic outcomes. Plagues events that kill 50+% of your capital's pop shouldn't occur with Luck+3. And even then, they should be restricted to dominions of Death. It's particularly disheartening to see your capital shrink from 30k to 14k in turn 10 with Luck+3 and Growth+1 - it just happened to me. In MP that would be a real gamebreaker.

[ January 24, 2004, 15:39: Message edited by: Nagot Gick Fel ]

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Death scale hardly needs to be made less desirable. Limited to misfortune would be far better.

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

on the other hand I tried a order 0 luck +3. I must have some chance, because contrary to Leadman, I didnt get any bad events. On the other hand I received one time 200 gp and perhaps 6 time some gems (in 30 turns, and with 10 provinces).

Dont seem to warrant the cost, by far. I mean getting something like 30 to 40 gems spread on 6 fields is nice, but is not sufficient.

[ January 24, 2004, 16:10: Message edited by: Pocus ]

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

Well, in my current game I had 4 knight attacks and 2 barbarian attacks in the first 25 turns, so I wouldn't know....

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

I'm not sure yet, but I'm leaning towards Order 3 + Misfortune 2, or at least Misfortune 1. The power of a given factions heroes influences this as well.

Anyway, I defintely agree that Order/Turmoil is too powerfull of an effect. I'm not sure what to think about Luck/Misfortune, as it's possible they would be ok if one didn't always take O+3.

Of course, as long as Order effects event frequency, Misfortune will always go with Order, and Luck with Turmoil...

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

In one game with luck 3 I got 1500 gold, 600 (or was it 500, not sure) gold, and a Robe of the Magi all within the first 20 turns. If only it had been MP... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ January 24, 2004, 18:18: Message edited by: Teraswaerto ]

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

in all my tests I never had more than 200 gp from luck, and generally I only got handful of gems. So the relative un-attractivness of the scale.

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

It's very difficult to evaluate fairly without knowning the actual numbers. Anecdotal evidence only goes so far to objectively appraise luck. Someone can have a couple of very unlucky games with Luck +3, and decide Luck is worthless, or the other extremes.

This can also be greatly slanted in cases where players cop out and "dump" a game early because things didn't seem to be going well, start a new one and just get annoyed and pretend it didn't happen. That playstyle is incompatible with (doesn't like / is incompatible with) the whole Luck/Event mechanic and I'd say should probably be campaigning for a game setting that removes all major disasters from the game, instead.

A couple of people have mentioned losing entire games due to disastrous events within the first ten turns while taking Order +3 with Luck -3, so if that turns out to be a relatively high chance, then it may be priced OK overall. On the other hand, I wonder if they lost because they gave up, or did they play as hard as they could to the game's end and still lost, and was it then because they were playing against multiple AI at Impossible, etc.?

All in all, it sounds like the really savage events (i.e. population down in home province by greater than 10%) might be best if they were made more rare than they are. Perhaps all population death events should have a maximum % and a maximum number of people, the lower effect being taken, and the max percent never greater than 10%. Losing 25% population even to catastrophic floods is awfully high.

Personally, I've played two games to unsuccessful conclusion, and two games out to turn 40- and 80- something, and about six short test games, all with either average or positive Luck, and my personal results have seemed fine to me, except for the one game (with Order zero and Luck zero) where I did lose 25% population and my home lab, but neither event was really a major contribution to my loss in the whole game. I don't recall any particularly important bad luck events in any of the other games, though the population losses do seem to outweigh the minor bonuses of most events, except when I played Mictlan with Luck +3. In that case, I've had no major bad luck (there have been population blitzes, but they've fallen on cruddy provinces with very low population), and the good luck has had three very important positive effects for my struggling nation (two unique-awesome-free national heroes, and a Soul Contract that has become the backbone of my military, without which I might've been wiped out by now).

Still, from a logic point of view, I think the argument is still compelling that:

1) if there are events which can permanently mess up your most important provinces, and

2) if they still occur with some frequency, and

3) if Order gives gold, resources, reduces unrest and reduces the chance of events, then

4) Order seems like it's likely a good idea.

However I can't attest at all to point 2) myself, and I really haven't cared enough to investigate point 3), since I'm still happily playing single-player without a thought to trying to "game the scales system" and having a bLast, not noticing any particular problems. So, I'm not really qualified to do much more than offer what I've seen, and some ideas.

PvK

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

I have been having pretty good results with order 1 luck 3 - I seem to get some of the best of both worlds that way. I *enjoy* lucky dominion, and this influences how I think about it, but I'd be truly afraid to take an order 3/misfortune 3 race into an MP.

One thing I have noticed is that some provinces seem to be more influenced by luck than others. I've had a single province have an immigration event twice and bring in a magic item and 3 sets of gems all in the first 15 turns, but other nearby provinces have no events at all. I don't know why this should be - but when people report a home province thats constantly bringing disaster, I wonder if they just didn't get an unlucky province placement, as it were.

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

Yes, Illwinter has posted a few times that the events only occur if certain conditions exist in the target province.

A tweak or two may still be in order. For instance, I think it'd be reasonable that if you have positive Luck scale in a province, it should be impossible or extremely unlikely to suffer from random catastrophes that kill more than say 5% of the population. Then if you took luck and kept your dominion strong in your home province, you wouldn't have to worry about getting bLasted by a bad event if you took a positive Luck scale, and that would be a good reason to get points for taking a negative Luck scale.

PvK

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

The fundamental problem with bad events is that the bad events are incredibly devastating and often potential game-enders. Meanwhile, the good events tend to be cute, but have little real influence. A few gems here and there, some useless units in the middle of nowhere to increase your upkeep costs until you get them killed (which isn't a good thing!), and othersuch. Nothing great. If there was a luck 3 event that went something to the effect of "Everyone dies. You win.", then I'm pretty sure everyone would be taking Turmoil/Luck. As it stands, the bad events can pretty much be a game-over, and Luck doesn't give you protection, since they happen just as often, if not more.

So it's not much of a surprise there when the prevailing attitude becomes "in for a penny, in for a pound".

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

I have been having really bad results in my Last game--O+3 L-3
At turn 2,7,13, a fire destroyed my lab
Turn 6, earthquake shocked temple
Before turn 30, at least 7 barbarian horde and 2 knights attacked my manor
most absurd one is , adjoint two provinces take turns got attack by barb horde in 4 turns in succession,my relief troops are forced run to here and run to there,run to back and back again..

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Wow, you're sure lucky. But at least you deserve it. And losing a lab here and there, a temple, a few barbarians, these are simply nuisances. They don't compare to losing half your population.

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

What your boys are missing in this discussion entirely is the following:

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">10.6 #eventisrare &lt;percent&gt;
Random events are divided into two categories, common and rare.
This value is the chance of a random event to be a rare one.
Default is 15.</pre><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">So it looks to me that the game-breaker events should only have 15% per event to occure at all. Than again what I've seen myself from games with Luck=0 (or worse) suggest that at least some of them may not be correctly flagged as "rare" ??

Anyone for a test with Turmoil=3, Luck=-3, "#eventisrare 0" to tell us which events did/didn't show up??

Would do it myself but I'm busy today ...

A.

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Getting 1500 gold and level 6 magic item(s) early is pretty great. Yeah, it doesn't happen every time, but luck is luck, it's supposed to be unpredictable. I think that limiting the worst events to negative luck scales would be enough.

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Death scale hardly needs to be made less desirable. Limited to misfortune would be far better. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Requires growth-0 or below, misfortune-1 or below?

I'd like to see a list of all disastrous events, and write a suggested list of scale requirements for all of them. All - yes, I mean all - the mass-kill events would require luck-0 or below. That would make luck dominions really worth something - although you could still get some bad events, maybe even seriously bad ones like invasions, you couldn't get your home province permanently crippled as long as you have dominion there and nobody is casting Baleful Star on you or something like that.

Turmoil/luck costs you a LOT of gold compared to order/misfortune, and you get some minor good events and about the same chance of disasters (or possibly more). Let luck rule out the major disasters, and turmoil/luck will get you disaster protection and some minor good events - it would at least be viable for nations that have required turmoil (Spring&Autumn, Barbarian Kings) or luck (Tuatha), or benefit extra from turmoil or luck (standard Pangaea).

Maybe some more good events would be nice too. "An itinerant healer cured all battle afflictions from your troops in (province)" would be a nice one. Or how about "A mysterious power removed curses from your troops in (province)"? Something that you can't predictably get from anything else, but you can occasionally get it by luck.

And how about, instead of/in addition to militia randomly joining you, useful commanders randomly joining you? Few people would turn up their nose at a free Sage, let alone an adept of any metal order or most other indy mages.

You occasionally get free sites with Luck - but they're always mines that give minor gold or resource bonuses. Why not allow any level 1 site (or possibly only those without harmful effects) to appear - discovered - for free? Or even level 2 sites, rarely, in a sufficiently strong luck and/or magic dominion?

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Death scale hardly needs to be made less desirable. Limited to misfortune would be far better. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That wouldn't make death scale less desirable, since plagues can already happen in a death dominion. And as it is now, I don't find death scale particularly bad.

The point is to make growth scale more desirable, especially if you play a theme that requires a bit of turmoil. I'm trying to make Diabolical Faith viable in MP, and unless I pick a Lady of Fortune for my pretender, it seems I can't get more than ~15k pop in my capital by turn 40 with turmoil+1, growth+1 and luck+3.

Now if someone knows that plagues can't happen with growth +2 ot +3, please tell me - I'd really like to know.

[ January 25, 2004, 17:01: Message edited by: Nagot Gick Fel ]

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There's already a site like this - a Deep Cave or something that nets you 1 earth gem/turn.

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Death scale hardly needs to be made less desirable. Limited to misfortune would be far better. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That wouldn't make death scale less desirable, since plagues can already happen in a death dominion. And as it is now, I don't find death scale particularly bad.

</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If not having death scale would make one immune to plagues, surely it would make people less likely to take death? Death makes supply harder and reduces population. Seems pretty bad to me, though I guess less so in a short game.

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, since it seems I can't grow pop when events are aplenty, I'm not even considering buying a growth scale with turmoil+something/luck+3 (I default to death+1 now). If I pick a positive growth scale I can accept lossing 3%, or even 1/5th (emigration due to turmoil) of the pop in my capital with these turmoil/luck settings, but surely not 50+% due a plague event! That's a problem that needs to be fixed. Plagues make sense with a death scale and I've no problem with it - I got what I paid (or actually didn't pay) for.

Quote:

Death makes supply harder and reduces population. Seems pretty bad to me, though I guess less so in a short game.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It's bad yes, but it gives you lots of design points, and if you buy order+3 with those your pop losses to bad events are extremely rare. Seems quite a bargain to me. I certainly lose way less pop with order+3/death+1/misfortune+3 than with turmoil+1/growth+1/luck+3, and it costs 200 less design points and makes you more rich to boot!

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Having played through hundreds perhaps thousands of turns, about half of which with T+3 and L+3, I've seen that _once_. It's colorfull, but in terms of balance it's insignificant.

The only really good events that occur on a regular basis are heroes (if you get a mage).

[ January 25, 2004, 19:30: Message edited by: Jasper ]

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

The 1500 gp event is no more uncommon than any other rare event, provided you have the requisite scales (luck +3). We played a mp game a while back where one of the players got the event 3 times before turn 40.

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

Hehe. Seems all we can conclude from all this is that there's a lot of luck in luck http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I've probably just had "bad" luck! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

That's always the problem with analyzing such rare but potent events, as a large variance is to be expected... I suspect that that 3 times in one game is an extreme outlier, but without knowing how many rare events exist I can't caclulate anything. On average I think it be fair to say that a player probably will not see this event in any given game, possibly even once in 10 games.

Moreover, even if one is astoundingly lucky enough to get this event 3 times in 40 turns, the resulting gold is _still_ much less than the income difference between Order+3 and Turmoil+3 -- or even the income difference between Order 3 and 0!

[ January 25, 2004, 20:27: Message edited by: Jasper ]

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Do the rare bad events also have requisite scales (luck -x)? (I think they should!)

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You do get useful commanders joining sometimes.

e.g. the Lore Master (I think they get 4 random magic picks and about 12 research) - event is something about some seal being broken and the old guy within agreeing to serve you for freeing him. I've also seen a few mages pop up with 2 nature, 2 air or 2 water. Not as impressive as the lore master, but beats a buncha militia.

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

With Luck +3 my men found an item - Soul Contract - made the difference of my survival in my most recent game, and is still responsible for the backbone of my army!

PvK

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

What event frequency are people playing with?

I have been playing commen events for awhile now as its more balenced and I'm using a +-13% (mis)fortune mod which alters the chance that an event is good/bad by 13% per level of dominion. I have been mainly playing testing T'ien Ch'i theme mods so I have used this combo alot using luck3/turmoil3. Generally I use the Lady of Fortune as she makes a big differnce. With this setup I would say that I would generally have got ~1000gps by turn 20 - sometimes more, occassionally alot more. I do get bad events but I'm yet to get one in my home province using the Lady of Fortune - I suspect this is a run of really good luck.

I have actually started to enjoy the events as long as they don't cripple my home province. This happened as soon as I trialed the Prince of Death in a luck race (appropriate I guess http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif ) ). Having to retake provinces occassionally is all part of the fun and there are alot of historical games I'm critical of for their lack of more significant events.

I've been keeping an eye on how many gems I get when I get a handful of gems and 2 seems fairly average - what is others experiance? If this is representative then its pretty piteful but I suspect luck has skewed things.

I would recommend people try a +-13 (mis)fortune mod and play commen events. This seems more balenced than playing standard with rare events. If you still want still better luck then change the mod to misfortune 15 making the chance of a good event with luck3 95%.

----------------------------------------
#modname "+-13 Fortune"
#description "This mod alters the chance an event is good (or bad) by 13% per level of (mis)fortune instead of the base 10. For those who find luck underpowered and misfortune not bad enough."
#Version 1.0
#domVersion 2.06

#misfortune 13
-------------------------------------------

Cheers

Keir

[ January 26, 2004, 07:29: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

I always play with common events, as I like random events unless they single handedly decide games.

Changing the percentage of good/bad events might help, but I still feel the real culprit is that Order is just too good, which makes luck very unattractive due to the negative synergy.

The Lady of Fortune is nice, but IMHO skews test results as most races can't even take her; the 1000 gold for 20 turns average you mention is way more than I've seen with T3/L3. Even that averages out to only ~50 gold a turn, which is just no match for ~+50% income O3 yields.

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

In one PBEM I'm in now with luck 3 turmoil 1, I've had two 500 gold events, and one where roughly 10000 people migrated into one of my provinces. No major bad events, only some unrest causing ones and a villain attack. Also, 3 heroes have shown up. All before turn 30. It's working out thus far.

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Did you play a Lady of Fortune, perchance?

To put things in perspective, in my Last try with Marignon/DF (turmoil+1, heat+1, growth+1, luck+3, magic+1), with common events, in 20 turns I got:

- 1 +200 gold event
- 1 +2 air gems event
- 1 extra item (Boots of Long Strides)
- 2 festivals held in my capital
- 1 hero (Carmont the Cardinal)

- 1 gem-stealing thief (lost 8 fire gems)
- 1 plague (in the capital)
- 2 brigand events (one happened in the capital)
- 3 strange events causing unrest and cursing a total of 27 units (one happened in the capital)
- 1 emigration event (in a 2k province, luckily)

The plague happened in turn 10, and since plagues kills more than half the pop and also cause some unrest, my income took such a big hit I couldn't even pay for my upkeep and had a couple units desert. I was unable to recruit anything before turn 14.

OTOH I played a very similar design earlier, with a Lady of Fortune, and didn't have a single bad event in ~30 turns.

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

Nope, no Lady of Fortune, but doesn't she only influence one province, and only to cause extra good events in addition to the events you get anyway? If so, she doesn't really protect against bad events. Anyway, I guess one needs a bit of luck for scale to be good. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There's a limit on the # of events you can get in a single turn. Since the LoF gives you an increased chance for a good event each turn, she effectively lowers the probability for bad events to occur.