Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Is there a Thread about this topic already?
Anyway, I would to hear some pros and cons about going Luck/Turmoil Route rather than just leaving everything blank.

With Luck/Turmoil you get access to heroes sooner, you get more magic crystals then you would other wise, but I assume you get less gold despite the events and you get events that could hurt you.

On the other hand, a lot of nations have fortune tellers, so that should help with many of the problems.

How does the forum feel about either of these?

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Like many things in the game any answers which sound absolute, like its true every time, should be suspect.

There are nations where this is less of a problem than with other nations. Such as the fortuneteller thing you pointed out. There are also nations who can benefit from turmoil such as Pangaea. On the other hand, some nations could be severely crippled by it. Especially if trying to use it in combination with other extreme scales.

As with many things in Dom3 the nation, type of game, size of game, size of map, call all affect whether this is a good route or not. But from what you say I think you have a good grasp of the pros/cons of it.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Agree with Gandalf.

But as a further point re Fortune tellers. They won't save you from misfortune issues usually and I would largely discount them from your luck/misfortune calculation. This is because one of the main problems with misfortune is the regular barbarian and unrest events that crop up causing income and province losses. Even if you have enough Fortune Tellers to stop bad luck they only affect the province they are in. And as they are usually mages you want them concentrated at your research centres rather than spread out stopping bad events happening. So they don't stop the 'cost of misfortune' much.

They mainly help the Capital. There are some very serious bad events that can all but kill you (especially in multiplayer) if they hit your capital very early. The Vampire Count, Bogus or some other serious attack on your Capital. The big population killers striking your capital (sometimes multiple times). And the loss of your capital's Lab very early on. Any of these can be fatal or at least lead to you falling back too far to recover.

The problem with fortune tellers here is that when these events really hurt is in the first couple of turns or at least the first half year of the game. And at that stage you are unlikley to have enough Fortune Tellers even in your capital to make sure these can't happen. By year two your fortune tellers may have made your capital safe from bad events. But by then none are fatal by themselves.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

I am a fan of the Jomon, and Onmyo-ji is one of the first purchases I make (in the future it will be the second). I realize that they only make up for a small amount of what can go wrong(PD probably helps as well), but you also have a lot of good things happening as well, hopefully more good things then bad. So, it's just a small amount that tips the scale a little more to turmoil/Luck rather then nothing, just like conscription tips the scale to use order a bit.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

I'm not certain, but I also believe turmoil leads to unrest being more of an issue? This is just a rumor I heard, not necessarily true.

But luck does keep you from the nasty events (as mentioned) and somewhat help alleviate some of the pain of other bad scales (namely death scales) though they don't get rid of all the plague events.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

High misfortune can be a real pain. Yes it raises unrest and it brings bad events. But it also can be a pain to others who are trying to push their way into your dominion. If you use something like fortunetellers to protect important provinces, its possible to use misfortune as a tactic against others.

Consider Bogarus (in the late age).
Fortunetellers for home, sneak commanders that cause misfortune and unrest and spy and stealth-preach. Sneak units to go with the sneak commanders that cause additional unrest. And 4th lvl summons for misfortune (0-lvl if cbm is used). Do you think all that is just coincidence? The also have national summons for 2 raise-fortune units and 4 seducers. A strategy of turtling while using these to lower the combat resources of your neighbors would seem to me to be almost pre-written into this nation.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

SP maybe gandalf, but in MP bogarus is going to have be a huge target, due to the incredible research of the starets. You're going to be spending your time and attention either with an awake pretender or churning out blood research to get past the mid game.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Generally if I want to take luck, I try to take it with neutral order. Otherwise, with turmoil you lose out on a lot of gold potential. On the other hand, if what you really want is just a lot of gems, and you're not that worried about gold, then turmoil can be worth it. That said, I would really only play turmoil/luck with pangaea.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

and EA+LA Mictlan and any other nation that you go to a quick blood economy/strategy. I guess MA+LA Abysia and some other nations can also work well for it, though taking them with Turmoil does raise some difficulties...

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

True, if you plan on relying on blood hunting, turmoil luck makes a lot of sense.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

If I'm going to kill my scales to make a good bless/a good pretender, I usually take luck (and sometimes growth) and then just lower everything else.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

I hate Luck. Psychologically, if something good happens, you feel like you paid for it, and if something bad happens, it pisses you off since you spent the points to get those positive scales.

Misfortune is the opposite - if something bad happens, you feel okay since at least you got the design points, and when good things happen, you feel like you cheated the devil his due.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

I tend to favor luck as it eliminates some province dependence and, contrary to the name, can actually be fairly reliable, though not always what you need at the time. I think it's also useful for nations that will look to diversify their magic earlier as it makes bootstrapping much less painful.

Also, it depends upon PD to a lesser extent. Granted, no PD is good, but given the choice between garbage PD and PD That Might Actually Kill Something, most players will attack the nation with garbage PD early. Less reliance upon provincial income/gems makes this less painful.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

I've played around with Luck/Turmoil several times. You don't need fortune tellers. You will generally get fewer bad events than a player with Order/Misfortune. However, the nation you select has to be able to absorb the loss of revenue caused by the turmoil scale.

Frequently, when taking Turmoil/Luck, I found it's extremely unwise to go heavy on Turmoil because there's no way to repair the loss of tax revenue.

Keep in mind that a lot of this is just strategizing and hasn't been put into practice.

You lose 7% income per shift toward Turmoil so sticking in the 1-2 Turmoil range will allow you to balance (up to 12%) the revenue loss with increases in Production/Growth.

I messed with T'ien Chi with this pretender (Keep in mind I'm not crazy about him overall right now, he was a test candidate):

Lord of Plenty (Body 1339, 150 hits)
Magic: Earth 8 Astral 4
Dominion 5
Scales: Turmoil 1 Productivity 2 Cold 1 Growth 2 Fortune 3 Magic 1
Imprisoned

Why I like MA-TC for Luck/Turmoil:

TC has incredible magical versatility and some relatively cheap basic mages and regular units. They have a need for extra production to build archers well since their archers are kind of resource intensive, so they are naturally predisposed toward Production scales, and they have old mages (not withstanding their national age reversal spell), so growth works too.. Taking magic scales allows for special events to occur. I'm not sure which events take which levels, but I'm sure there's a table somewhere (in fact I know there is). I think Luck-3, Magic-3 has a special event associated with it.

Ignore the magic picks and focus on the scales. That was an interesting but not very useful experiment.

The experiment showed that you can sustain very good mage and unit production with a flat income bonus (0% total). The money drop specials are the bomb, but it's the gem drops you're looking for. The gems are random but occur frequently enough to be useful and will put you ahead of the curve especially since TC can site search everything except blood and death naturally and they can use virtually any gem type.

TC Also has excellent Immortal national heroes.

Now, TC is recommended to take order because of free PD, but I still get PD bonus events. After all, I'm lucky!

So after my rambling.... What I'm essentially looking for in the Turmoil/Luck combo is:

1. A nation that can use a wide variety of gems.
2. A nation that deals well with good scales and slightly decreased money supply (e.g. no bonus money). Cheaper common troops, with higher production requirements otherwise we're wasting the Production scale bonus.
3. A nation that can tough it out with a Dormant/Imprisoned pretender.
4. A nation that can select the Lady of Fortune pretender since she causes good events, not just prevents bad events.
5. A nation that benefits in some other way from Turmoil like Pangaea that gets extra Maenads.
6. A nation that has patrol units that can be used effectively to increase provincial income with growth scales (say 120% tax rate) to supplement the revenue loss from the turmoil scale.

Methodology:

1. Don't overdo the Turmoil. It only gives you a boost to event frequency, but you lose a lot in exchange. Leave the scale flat (0%) or take 1 tick, and 2 ticks cautiously and only if you're taking a patrolling nation.

2. Balance the income loss from the Turmoil with Production/Growth.

....

Now we'll get back to the magic path weirdness:

What I was looking into was the possibility of taking a Bless strategy (which doesn't necessarily work well with TC b/c their Sacreds are cap-only), in conjunction with the luck scale. Certain nations may be able to pull off such an oddity and it could prove to be an extremely useful strategy since:

1. The bless strategy makes for an excellent early to mid game with no need for significant magic use, and therefore, no significant gem expenditures which...

2. Will leave you with a massive and diverse gem horde in mid to late game which is INVISIBLE to your opponents since luck gems don't show up on the graphs which can also let you fly under the radar a little but not too much since a good player will see your scales and anticipate magical diversity, but will give you a head-start when magic starts to take over.

Just some thoughts. I usually like to play with the Lady of Fortune when I take Luck, but with Pangaea, pretender choice doesn't matter as much. The Luck/Blood combination provides for an excellent benefit with Crossbreeding which is my favorite spell in Pangaea (I use Crossbreed fodder in all armies). The "lucky" breeds are formidable and common especially for what you're paying to get them.

---

Oh! As for the Fortune tellers, I always look at fortune tellers as a license to take Misfortune scales. The very first fortune tellers were the Fortune Tellers of Black Forest Ulm in Dominions 2 which forced you to take Misfortune scales. Anyone who has frequently hired cap-only fortune tellers or hire-anywhere fortune tellers can easily take Misfortune scales because you will mitigate bad events simply by research process. Fortune telling is also a cumulative percent chance to avert a bad event per province rather than each individual having a certain chance to avert an event. For example, if you have 20 Sibyls in your capitol each having Fortune-teller (5), you cannot have a bad event in your capitol, ever, regardless of your misfortune scales.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

As for Bogarus and the Kalendologists:

Kalendologists are pretty good fortune tellers and cheap, but this does not in anyway indicate that they should be massed as researchers since the Master of Names is far better. The way I see them is to say that they can create a formidable Soul Slay or Enslave Mind communion given their incredible cheapness (90 gold) and the fact that they have 2S basic. Throw POTS with a Kalendologist Communion Master and have someone along with a Banner of the Northern Star (or just cast the spell), and you have a (with just POTS): Soul Slay communion, or with POTS+LOTNS, an Enslave Mind communion. Snazzy.

Unfortunately for the Kalendologist, they have a disadvantage to their blue-robed cousin the Astrapelagist who can:

Summon Simargl Patrols
Cloud Trapeze
Commune to Thunderstrike OR Soul Slay

Astrapelagists also have a better buff array in their communion especially if you have a nice 2/8 which gives you twice as many scripted buffs twice as fast and Thunder strikes for up to 50/4 with +1 (POTS to cast TS), and then +3 bonus for communion size, and +1 again for storm power for 12.5 fatigue Thunderstrikes notwithstanding the fact that you also get 2 masters with 6A5S. You can still POTS/LOTNS to get Soul Slay for 20/3 (7 fatigue), but no Enslave mind.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Some notes:
Gandalf is wrong: Misfortune is not a weapon against your enemies. Your luck scales act as misfortune scales for your opponents (ie, so long as its in your dominion).

Presumably, your misfortune scales act as luck scales for your opponents.

O/L is a perfectly playable combination in CBM - I happen to like it a lot with some nations. Sure, you get fewer events, but that just means you need more provinces to routinely max out your events...

T/L works for nations who don't need a lot of cash. Not only do the Mictlans generally want to get into blood in a big way, they also don't need much cash to pop out an expansion party every turn. So Turmoil synergizes with the blood, it also isn't that painful.

Many nations that require high resources can afford turmoil because the gold:resource ratio for their troops reduces their gold needs substantially.

(Obviously (almost) all nations would *like* order scales since infrastructure is still costly, but you can make up the difference in faster expansion with a lot of nations since those turmoil scales are usually translating into a better blessing or more-uber awake SC).

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Well Ive seen plenty of complaints about taking a nation with misfortune and immediately losing it to things like barbarian attacks. Not sure what the timing is for that

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

It's not the barbarian attacks. PD of 15+ will generally defeat any barbarian attack that you get at Misfortune-2.

The problem is taking Misfortune-3 which gives you Knight parties (like the ones that quest for the Chalice) that appear in a province at random and then expand to adjacent provinces if you don't go kill them. These generally cannot be defeated by any sane PD level.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Um.. are you playing the same game as the rest of us? Or are you just trolling the thread?

There are no knights who go questing for the chalice. There's no code connected to the chalice to cause such a thing (confirmed by lch). This is nothing but flavor text on the Chalice description - there is no substance.

Small numbers of barbs require Mf1 to trigger.

Knight attack requires Mf2 to trigger. Its ~30 militia and knights. They do not go invading other provinces - they work exactly like all other independents.

large numbers of barbs (~100) require Mf3 to trigger.

When i said your opponents luck acts like misfortune for you, i meant it has the scale effects thereby. (Ie, increases % negative events instead of positive). I don't know if your opponent's luck acts like misfortune for threshhold effects (required to trigger event X), but then, I don't know your opponent's misfortune works like misfortune for threshhold effects either. It would not surprise me if the checks for threshhold effects are entirely separate from the % good/bad effect check in the code, and so it may treat it differently in either case, or may even ignore the scale for threshhold effects if its outside your dominion. I simply don't know, but I wasn't trying to make a claim about threshhold effects.

In terms of the turn you capture a province, events are generated before army movement, so if you get attacked by barbs after invading your opponent's province, that event was generated for your opponent.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Bleh... I appear to have lost all reading comprehension and completely misread your (squirrel's) post... significant editing...

I'll generate a turn file for you...

Turn file ready. Look at T'ien Chi this turn and then step it forward and watch the location of the future knight attacks--they always seem to occur in provinces adjacent to the original attack.

The knight attacks do appear move from the original province to adjacent ones or at least they appear to do so by some extremely unlikely coincidence in multiple games. Though it appears to take several turns. This may mean that if you have a Knight attack in a given province and then get a bad event in a province adjacent to it that there is a surety or at least increased likelihood that that province will also be invaded by knights.


As for the Chalice attack, I had always wondered why I was never actually attacked while using it, but I thought that it might be because I was careful to put the chalice back in the lab when not in use. ^_^

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

I did some brief testing on the whole "luck scales act as misfortune scales for the enemy" last year, but I had to give up as I didn't have the info necessary to interpret the results. As this was long before Edi did his recent random events list (and their triggers), and it was before I started compiling my own events list. (I actually gave up doing this test in order to start that events list so as to obtain the data I needed for this test).


I tested Order and Production scales though, and the effects of good enemy scales (ie. Order 3 + Production 3) were not reversed when they appeared in my provinces under enemy dominion (ie. They did not become Turmoil 3 + Sloth 3). Although when I tested Turmoil 3 and Sloth 3, both these scales immediately took effect on a province upon appearing regardless of whose dominion was there.

I only did brief testing on the Luck/Misfortune scale though, as it was very hard to judge results from the events I was getting due to the lack of a reference for the events I was getting (ie. No Edi's events list). Although I would say that I know how often bad events strike with a Misfortune 3 scale, and in my brief tests I didn't seem to be getting the same level of horrible stuff happening from a Luck 3 scale in enemy dominion. I guess the Dominions RNG going through a kind phase could explain that though :)


My suspicion is though that the Luck / Misfortune scale acts the same way as the Order / Turmoil, Production / Sloth and Magic / Drain scales. Which is.....

You can never gain the benefit of 'good' enemy scales unless you have positive dominion in the province(s). But any 'bad' scales in a province are always in effect, regardless of positive, negative, neutral dominion. And regardless of whose scales they actually are.


I actually laugh my arse off every time I see someone suggest taking Drain 3 and then using Heretics, Stone Idols or whatever to get the province to neutral or enemy dominion in order remove the -2 research penalty from the Drain scale. All I say to that suggestion is try it!!! The only way to get rid of the effects of a Drain scale is to get rid of the Drain scale :) And this seems true for all the 'bad' scales from the three scale groups I've mentioned above.


I'll probably re-test Luck / Misfortune when I find time now that I have Edi's events list as a reference. Although can't see me actually having that time for several months, and I would be surprised if the effects of Luck 3 did reverse. (although as Squirrelloid indicates, it will probably all depend on just how the game reads scales when it comes to deciding which events can trigger. Since it may well read scales for events purposes irrespective of dominion)


Also, attached is a save to show my point on the Drain scale. Note the LA Pythium Serpent Priests still have a -2 RP penalty even though the cap dominion is neutral. (their RP would be 6 and not 4 if the effects of the Drain 3 scale had been successfully negated.)

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

What Squirrelloid meant is that you need 'at least' Misfortune 2 to trigger Knight attacks. So you will obviously get Knight attacks with a Misfortune 3 scale. (as Misfortune 3 'includes' Misfortune 2 events)

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

No, never mind... I'm just an idiot and it was an odd coincidence in both occurrences. After the test which seemed to support my hypothesis (I got knight attacks on two adjacent provinces to the original one), I rolled back the turn and tried it again and couldn't get it to repeat--or rather couldn't get the knights to appear to "travel" the second time. Thus, one for and one against.

I have, of course, only taken Misfortune-3 twice--once in SP and once for this test. I did win the game (with Marignon), but the strong attack events are ridiculously frustrating and can cripple a nation in early game. I have never taken Mis-3 since then. The last point isn't worth the 40 design points.

I've never gotten a knight attack at Mis-2, and I take Mis-2 all the time. It must be exceedingly rare.

and Calahan, as for the Mis-2/Mis-3 thing, that's not what I meant. I skimmed his post too liberally and took him to mean that such a thing does not occur. I appear to have skipped a paragraph or something... I dunno... I just woke up.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

It would be interesting if a misfortune push could work against your enemies. But if it did this would still be a very difficult strategy to play.

On the other hand, that doesnt play into most of my post about LA Bogarus. The fortune and misfortune abilities in that nation are still something worth trying. I dislike how often nations are rated if the discussions dont seem to make an effort to try and use the differences built into those nations.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

All bad scales are always bad scales no matter whose dominion.

Luck scales are misfortune for everyone else but the owner of that dominion.

I think you may get the research bonus from magic even in enemy dominion, but that may be the only effect that goes against the grain. Otherwise it's no benefit from positive scales of enemy dominion.

The events list I compiled gives a detailed analysis of what happens with what, and the best synergies are luck 2 order 2 magic 2 (luck 3 + magic 3 if you want the best events as well).

Having turmoil prevents a lot of good events even if you have luck. Having growth prevents most poploss events, but if you have growth and magic, you can get Ancient Presence, which causes 95% poploss. Though once it happens, it can't happen again until the monster is killed off the map.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Population growth from growth scales seems to happen regardless of whose dominion it is, but you don't get the %income increase if its not your dominion.

You do not gain +RPs for magic scales that aren't in your dominion.

Note, if its your candles, you get the full benefits of any displayed positive scales, even if they aren't 'yours'.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

I 2nd DonC.
Not only due to psych effect of L/T.
I really really tried to make L/T combo work for me in MP but all I got, repeatedly, was disappointment.
I got the gems alright but my income was so bad and had no income events in first 15 turns => game over.

So T is out of the question for me (with exception of Pan).

As Squirrelloid mentioned good luck can work with order in CBM and indeed it's a combo I like. I'm not basing this only on number crunching but rather on experience.
Oh, and Mft in CBM is such a PiTA. Even for solid PD nations it gets annoying, causes more MM and can be really devastating during expansion phase. In YARG I took msft2 as bogarus and payed a hefty price. It was like I was in war with the barb nation and then there was this important province of mine raided by the visiting heroes. They kept it to the end, neither me nor my enemies could spare the resources to take it back.

One last comment, I have this MP game in which my L3 just stopped working. I mean, I have a strong dominion and >50 provinces but I got no lucky events for like 20 turns in a row. Luck worked perfect for first 20-30 turns of the game and then suddenly stopped. It took me awhile to notice that. Strange.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

I really developed a deep-seeded hatred for Luck in the last Rand game. I took a scale of Luck as Sauro, blood-pumped dominion everywhere and expected to be raking in some diverse gems and income. But my main reason was I really wanted to get the Sauro heroes for some sorely needed magic diversity. Seemed to work well in a few test runs.

Well, the actual game got to about turn 60ish and I never got a single hero. Not. One.

Oh and that's not all. My lab burned down twice, once preceding being biesieged, which caused an immense migraine as I could not equip the fort defenders with the appropriate counter gear.

After that experience, you can run all the charts and analysis and stats but I will never take luck scales again. That's right. F-U Luck!

P.s. I also am against Turmoil as Pan since their troops are so expensive and maenads are a one-trick pony, but that's another story.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Luck by itself does little. Luck in conjunction with some of the other scales does a hell of a lot more. If you have otherwise all neutral scales, taking luck is just a waste of design points.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

I kind of like turmoil 1 for pan. You still get maenads, mostly get gold, and it still will work well with luck. I don't think I will ever take turmoil 3 in any real game.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Concerning Pangaea and Luck:

I've found l3/t3 to be great in MP if I survive to the late game. I prefer the many gem events to the lost income. The great thing about Pangaea is that even though Maenads are a one trick pony, they can carry you through the early game. It's not uncommon to be able to eliminate a nearby opponent with Maenad swarms, especially if the map is crowded. This doesn't guarantee survival into the late game, but it does give you some early game strength.

Also, if graphs are turned on, it has been my experience that people tend to shy away from attacking you if your army is many times the size of theirs, and Pangaea is not seen as a big threat in the late game depending on era.

That being said, going the opposite direction with Pangaea and cranking out tons of Minotaurs sure is sexy as well :).

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

To be clear, the scale of Luck I mentioned above was with Order and Magic scales (not just 1 Luck and all else neutral...)

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

I second this. I LOVE luck 1 with order and magic if you have the spare points.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

optimal scales for maximizing the output of Luck scales are Death 3 and Magic 2 (although might as well take 3 at that point). This unlocks all the really good events.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

I took Order 3 / Luck 3 in a few games last year and I never once got close to having a decent reward for the design points I spent. Since them I'm pretty firmly with Don C's opinion . Since as I see it now..

Order / Misfortune = Win / Lose, sometimes Win / Win.
Turmoil / Luck = Lose / Win, sometimes Lose / Lose.

Turmoil / Luck is at best Lose / Win, since you will always 'lose' from having less income due to Turmoil, but can sometimes 'win' from the good random events you get from Luck. But when you get bad events, it really is a case of 'Lose' 'Lose' on both fronts.

Order / Misfortune is usually Win / Lose, (Win from income boost, Lose from bad events). But it can also be Win / Win when you get good events from the Misfortune scale.

And for me at least, it is the Win / Win and Lose / Lose scenarios that is the real deal maker for 90% of nations when choosing these two scales.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

There was a very long thread about this awhile back and the reason turmoil / luck is a sucker's bet is that there is a cap on random events, typically 3 per turn. If you have enough provinces you can hit the 3 event cap, even with order, plus get the consistently high income. Basically you shouldn't take scales based on the % chance of random events, which means you should always take order except for Pangaea.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

TTYTT, I don't even, generally, take Turmoil with Pangaea, though I have tried it a few times and always end up disappointed. I hate waiting for a money event to build a castle when I could have a sure thing with Order. This is why I say that when taking Turmoil, you have to be able to absorb the loss with relative ease and that means that it's really only good for nations with cheap mages and Pangaea is not one of those nations.

Pangaea's mages are very expensive--from basic researcher (dryad) to the various Pans, while Maenads are only useful as fodder and even then, not particularly good fodder.

Why would I want to put up with Turmoil for all that time just to get some crappy free units?

I think that (now upon looking at the event list), that even if I wanted to go with Luck, I would either go with neutral scales or Order-2, though I always feel it necessary to balance out the income reduction with Production/Growth which means it's still probably the most expensive scale choice both in terms of gold loss and design point cost. (Order/Luck is obviously more expensive, but if you're going for a scales nation, you probably have a good national unit strategy that doesn't rely heavily on your pretender).

The most successful Pangaea strategies I've used involve Order--forsake the Maenads for more Pan! I don't need crappy Maenads... I can summon better fodder or just let it crawl out of the Carrion Woods.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

I'm just posting to increase the size of my, err, reputation. Thank me for it and be rewarded in the afterlife.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

And this thread's existence is why I suggested that CBM increase the likelihood of rare events occuring, to reward taking luck more and be a greater punishment for playing misfortune. That didn't go over so well though.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

In the current game I'm playing I took Order 2, Luck 2, Growth 2, Magic 2 with Machaka and by turn 40 I've had at least 20 750+ gold events and a host of others.

I bought some of those scales with sloth and heat and a sleeping pretender with rather unimpressive magics but decent dominion.

I could have gone with magic 1, but would probably have had less good events. The growth scales with the others have guaranteed freedom from barbarian invasions and plague events, all of which cause poploss and if you have death or misfortune (or worse, both), those pile up fast and wreck your empire.

Not that this build would work in MP, but that's one anecdote against the other negative ones.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

If I'm playing Turmoil/Luck, its usually because i'm already playing S3 H/C3 D3. Ie, big bless territory (Mictlan, Lanka, etc...) or something like LA Ermor (meh, population).

Returns from luck are vastly increased by D3 and M2+, because it opens up a number of big cash events that also come with magic items. T3S3C3D3L3M3 has netted me 6000+gold/year in events in some games, plus gems and magic items. (Not to mention free forts/temples/labs)

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Death really opens up good events?

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

A few big ones, but just having death at any level (including neutral, instead of growth 1) means you're open to all the plague events. The scales listed above only really work for Ashen Empire or a heavy bless nation in a short game on a small map. Otherwise he needs to expand faster than his dominion and that becomes hard on a large map.

If you want to do your own analysis, check the event list that I have linked from my sig.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

My D3L3 scales have yielded a feeble amount of good events on the course of the current game (turn 74). As I mentioned I have strong dominion and many provinces.

Thanks but no thanks for that luck scale. I'm going to stick with either neutral or Mft 1 in the future.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Actually, I often get the plague at Mft 2 Gr 1.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

By the way, I may say that I had a good enough experience with Luck/Turmoil as Helheim and EA Ulm. I think that it's more of cheap castles- than cheap mages- dependant.
I also agree that Luck becomes better with other positive scales. And Misfortune worse with the same. Drain+Misfortune = Magic Fading = ouch!

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Death is pretty brutal all around. I tried Death/Luck/Turmoil with Pan and got scourged with plagues. A couple in the capital pretty much offset most gains from the random income events (not to mention the late game joy of managing starving maenad hordes).

Luck is a slippery slope. You pick it, then think you can take some Turmoil to boost its power, then figure you'll throw in some Death thinking you will get the dying prince with his 1500 gold and some powerful magic item, then you go for Magic scales to spice things up with visions of vast gem hordes - in the end you have just concocted a big dookie stew with plagues, chaos, poverty and all-around misery.

Heed my warnings and stick with Or3/Sloth2/Mis2/Mag1!

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Not all plague events are prevented by growth.

A quick check of the events list tells me that there is one poploss 50% plague event that can happen regardless of growth/death scale.

There are five other famine or plague events that the presence of a growth scale prevents, and those events have requirements of death 0 (famines) and death 1, death 2 or death 3.

So yeah, if you have misfortune 2 and growth 1, it increases chances of bad events and eliminates a substantial number of certain events from the list, making that one event then more likely.

As far as death events that grant gold, there is one single luck 2 death 3 1500 gold event and one luck 1 death 1 750 gold event. That's all the gold you can get based on death. In almost all cases the money events are either order scale events or luck/order.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

Absolutely. In CBM make it Mis1 or neutral. As it currently stands taking luck doesn't return the design points investment.

Re: Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.
 

When I talk about absolutely tanked scales like T3S3H/C3D3L3M1+, the L3 is mostly to mitigate how bad the other scales are. D3 without L3 is a death sentence. And you take scales that bad precisely so you can afford triple blessed sacreds or other crazy nonsense, not because you want luck scales.

Ideally I vastly prefer O3L3 combinations to T3L3 combinations. Even O3S3H/C3D3L3M1+ is vastly better from just a scales consideration. But it costs 240 more points. You're not getting triple blessed jags that way.