Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

Ok, I got my full game last night, and I started playing my favorite race from Dom II: Niefelheim.

But here's the problem, and I am thinking it must be a bug. Basically, I am getting hit with a disaster on nearly every turn (I started counting from turn 20, and in the 32 turns I've played since then, it's happened on 27 turns!). And by "disaster," I mean the event where I lose 5 percent of population and a few other nasty things.

Now, you may ask about my luck scale, but it's on plus 3 luck! So I don't see how this could happen on nearly every turn. Is this a Niefelheim bug? Or is this a spell that the AI is casting on me? I don't think it's a spell because it started happening around turn 10, and that's a bit early for the AI to have researched it--if such a spell even existed.

Anyways, I got so frustrated that I deleted the game, as I ran out of money and population and there was no way I could win (I had 7 opponents, and they were all on impossible).

And I even had my prophet who had over 500 HPs and 80 strength due to Unequaled Obesity who had already killed over 1000 units! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

Oh, my other scales included minus 3 Drain, minus 1 Order, and minus 3 Cold (that's the optimum for Niefelheim), and minus 2 Sloth.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

Hmm, i had something equal with 3 luck scale yesterday after patching. I got 3 times in the first 6 turns the event in which 20% of the people leave the land.

I believed thats just bad luck but if someone else had the same situation this could possible be a bug! I'm not sure what i was playing i just tested something, but i think it wasn't niefelheim.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

Strange... it might have something to do with Turmoil. In a blitz just now, I had Order 0 Luck 3, and had lots of events, and just few non-good (3-4? by turn 26). My two neighbours had Turmoil 3 Luck 3, and got lots of bad events.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

Here is the silly part about luck. Notice it gives you extra events. Notice that with luck 3, it does not cover you for even above 50% for those extra events. Which means you have less chance of getting good events than neutral/bad ones. Lame!!! XD

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

You were playing on IMPOSSIBLE AI, with 7 such AI's, one AI or more will have been casting spells on you. Turn 20 on impossible is not too early for the AI's to have such spells.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

You can get several huricanes off on someone by turn 7 or 8 if you go with a rainbow sage.

So I definitely think an impossible AI (lots of extra points) could be casting spells by turn 10 if it made that task a priority.

http://www.evilfree.com/dom3/researchCalc-v2.html

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

Base chance for an event being good or bad is 50%. I'm not sure about the maths, but I think your claim is just silly.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

I really think it's a bug. I will play Niefelheim again under the same conditions, and let you guys know if I get it again.

I will then write down precisely what the event was that kept recurring.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

Remember, some of the bad events you get are the enemy casting hostile spells at you on purpose, so luck, misfortune and turmoil have absolutely nothing to do with it.

Those spells get reported as random events...when they are not really random.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

i had the same sort of situation happen to me from turn one for about 20 rounds or so. i believe i was playing on impossible ai, but other than that i cannot recall what scales or even which race i was playing as

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

It must be a bug then. There's no way that even "Impossible" AIs can cast those spells from turn 1 onward.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

You could just be having bad luck. It is quite possible even with luck +3

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

Depends on his scales, those could be normal random events from having misfortune/turmoil or just being plain unlucky.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

In the original post, he said he had Luck 3 Turmoil 3, and was asking if Luck 3 with lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of bad events was a bug, or just very unlucky.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

By "original post," do you mean my post? If so, I said I had Turmoil 1, not Turmoil 3.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

Yes, I did, and sorry about the confusion. I confused you with my neighbours in a recent blitz, both of whom had Turmoil 3.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

There as been debates on luck before and no doubt there will be others in the future.

The problem is you can flip a coin 100 times and in theory it should come up heads 50 times aprox. and 50 times tails approx.

However, as any gambler will tell you, in practice you can have long runs of heads or tails. Sooner or later you will get 100 heads or tails in a row, a freak result.

Same in Dom3 with luck 3/turmoil 3, you may only have lets say a 10% chance at a bad event, but its possible to keep rolling that 10% turn after turn...

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

Also bear in mind that there are bazillions of Dominions players out there "flipping coins", so atleast one of us is bound to come up with such an unlikely streak http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

Also, remember that the nation doesn't matter... only the current scale in the provinces conquered. Which is why good scales are so much more useful with high dominion.

In dom2, the way to get money seemed to be order 3/luck-3. In dom3, I have had better experience with turmoil 3/luck3, in fact for most nations I prefer dom9+,turmoil3,sloth3,luck3,growth3 as the way to get a ton of cash. Those 600,1000, and 3000g events really adds up.

As usual, please note that I rather suck at this game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

Even 20 times in a row is pretty astronomical:/ 100 times in a row, nope, if everyone on this planet was flipping coins from their births to their deaths - most likely (very very very likely) they'd all die before anyone did 100 in a row.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

Ask a professional gambler or casino owners or bookmakers if you could flip a head 100 times in a row.

So long as there is a chance of something happening, sooner or later it will, it will be very, very rare but it will happen.

The odds of flipping a head 10 times in a row are only 1/1024, when you consider how many random rolls you must make in Dom3, you are bound to get a 'losing run' every now and then.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

Yeah, but flipping heads 100 times in a row are this to the 10th power - roughly, 1/10^30. This is really astronomically low. If every human being in existence (roughly 6.10^9 of us) tried this every second for a year (roughly 3.10^7 seconds), the probability of someone. somewhere, getting 100 heads in a row would be of order 1/5.10^13, not that much different from someone winning the "Loto" TWICE IN A ROW ("Loto" is a chance game where you pick 6 numbers out of a possible 49, and then exactly 6 numbers are rolled, and you "win" if you guessed all 6 - something you have about 1 chance in 40000000 of doing).

Or, to put it another way, if all 6 billion human beings had starded flipping coins around the Big Bang, a hundred flips per second, it would still be very unlikely that one of them had flipped 100 heads in a row by now.

Now, I'm the first to tell my students (I do teach probability theory, among other things) that if you try long enough, something extremely unlikely like flipping 100 heads in a row will happen. But it helps to have an idea of what "long enough" means. In this case, it's really long.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

Well, as a philosophy teacher I just want to add that all speculation on what is to come in the future is based on what have passed, which really doesn't tell us anything about the future as it is the past and not the future. Even if you add millions of past events together it is still the past you are "foretelling" with. The future hasn't happened yet, it is still unknown.

And saying that one future is more "likely" to happen than another future is subjected to the same problem (the problem of induction), in that the predictions are based on past events. The future as a factor is still not precent in the calculations.

Saying that the sun will go up the next morning is not certain, but it is not even (logically) more or less probable. The universe could disappear, and alien armada could destroy it or whatever. Just because we haven't seen it before must not mean that it can't happen or even that it is more or less probable. I would say it could happen or it could not - 50%/50%. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

You could of course choose to believe in probability (and it seems wise) as you see the "truth" of it all day happening. But it is just that - belief. I just happen to believe in logic.

Sorry for my "off-topicness", but I couldn't resist to say something about the fascinating thing that is probability.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

But it happened in my home province, Niefelheim. So the starting scales were in effect most of the game.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

What is this logic you believe in... you are engaging deconstructionism to such an extreme level, you are essentially denying the practice of the scientific method (making assumptions/predictions about an underlying physical reality based on observation).

The gamebreaking fallacy of this type of argument, is that it is only possible to express given language... and language necessitates an outside world to communicate with... an outside world is only possible through interpretation of our senses, and so your argument is fallacious.

You can say anything you want has a 50/50% chance of happening... in fact, you can _say_ it has a 300% chance of occurring. Your ability to say this, does not invalidate, or even affect in the slightest, the validity or invalidity of probabilistic statements.

Sorry, but I am from a math background, and hence have somewhat strongminded views on the matter... All of human language, experience, science... all are essentially more closely modelled as probabilistic distributions, rather than discrete answers. Every measuring device or method in science comes with an error range. Even things that people think of as discrete, such as a statement like "I saw one man run off into the forest!" are really more accurately modelled as a probability distribution... Poor eyesight, tricks of light, sudden onset of mental illness... all are very real, though small, observable probabilities, that would give you more information about the situation if you knew said distributions.

/unrant!

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

The problem with the 100 heads in a row analogy it muddies the water becauase people are focused on the fact tht it is the same result 100 times in a row. You have to add that the odds are the same for any described 100 result sequence. The odds of 100 heads in a row is just the same as getting a head then a tail then a head then a tail etc.. over a hundred flips.

If you ask that question to the average person and most will say the odds of the latter are more likely when they aren't.

You will also get clustering and clumping of numbers since random probability is not a uniform occurence.
I work in an industry that is ruled by probability (the slot machine industry) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

The most interesting probability riddle to me is the one about how likely is it that 2 people share the same birthday in a room of 50 people.

Edit: I should add I am not a mathematician. I suck at math horribly. I just invent stuff.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

I tried a test game playing niefelheim turmoil 3 luck 3 magic 3, sloth 1-2ish (can't remember) growth 3.

I got bad events nearly every turn of the game. The most common was "cursed for the rest of their lives" and barbarian hordes attacking provinces. I received good events as well, but there seemed to be something else at play.

I play Pangaea nearly exclusively, and always with turmoil 3 luck 3, and it is black and white as far as events go compared to my niefelheim game.

I am going to do another test game to see if it was just very abyssmal luck on my testing.

The only real difference besides it being two different nations I can think of is the cold scale, but surely the cold scale would not trigger the events I was getting.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

As a gamer since an early age, and a Philosophy major for one academic quarter http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif, I would say this is a good example of different disciplines (Philosophy versus Mathematics) using different definitions of the same words (here "probability" and "likeliness"). I offer a counter-example, from the discipline of gambling: Since we know that betting on the sun rising would be extra-silly since if it doesn't, we'll probably all be dead, I will offer to bet you any monetary amount up to my current net worth, every day for the rest of my life, that any particular easily-observable star in the sky will continue to exist in the sky the next day. Limits: one bet per day; each bet is void if for some reason we cannot confirm the presence of the star due to weather or technological/informational problems. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

PvK

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

As for Dominions, I play a lot with Luck, but not yet as Niefelheim. One recent example: Oceania, Order 0, Cold 3, Luck 3. Turn 71. Generally results have been quite good within my dominion. I don't remember any serious bad results in my home province.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

the events you get are definitely associated with your scales (beyond luck influencing you to the positive side. Turmoil definitely seems to push the barbarian horde and witch curse events.

I definitely have noticed it more recently. But that might be because I wasn't going turmoil before. Witch curse, barbarian horde aand knights attacking. When I have death scales more vampires and necromancers seem to attack.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

Well it would seem that I was just unlucky in my first test game (Irony? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ). In my second test game things are playing more like i expected.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

I'm starting to think that Luck is very heavily dependent on a strong friednly dominion for you. Taking control of Luck-neutral provinces makes you vulnerable to bad events.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

I did some test with luck 3 turmoil 3 magic 3 and lady of fortune. I didn't get a bad event until turn 20 or so and that was in an outlying province. I did get a whole bunch of ridiculously good events like olegs device, mages comign to help etc.. and a heroe two turns in a row..
But the payoff for all that really wouldn't help in a blitz game.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

I am glad someone else could duplicate my results, and that I was not hallucinating.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

I did NOT have a Turmoil scale.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

Hmmmm. I should re-test too then.

Re: Niefelheim disasters--bug?
 

That may be true, but my string of misfortunes occurred on my home province: Niefelheim.