I noticed that I tend to always go for a Order/Misfortune for most cases, so I tend to take those that can use turmoil/luck with great glee. The only few so far i used a luck turmoil scale was for EA Mictlan, LA R'yeth and now I'm trying EA Pan.

And then it struck me that there's certain nuance to using luck and misfortune that isn't obvious. Was wondering what insight vets have on this. To start:

1) only 3 events (I think I've seen 4 sometimes :confused:) can happen at the same turn.

-This seem to say that the impact of luck/Mis gets smaller the bigger the game. So luck would get a mark against in a large map.

2) You tend to get events for new provinces you capture (Or sometimes it just stays in a certain few provinces before moving onto different provinces...), the province selection mechanic is not randomized by my observation. Knowing how the game generates event will be very important...

that means on luck scale you're forced to push Dom hard which can be difficult and waste much opportunity cost(and not always possible, sometimes your STUCK with those new provinces in neutral-negative luck. Whereas for Misfortune this is a good thing, you get to either use the neutral or same ol' negative luck pushing your border out.

3) Luck dependent rolls: Breeding, Transformation and void gate. How chances for good spawn and transform is affected by them.

I particularly like this, I love the slot-machine effect of casting breeding and using Void gate summoning. It happens to tie in nicely to certain teams like LA R'yeth and EA Mictlan. I was wondering if there is a comprehensive list of what other things luck may effect? I'm almost certain there are a lot beyond turn events, breeding and void gate. Maybe transforming Pan could be fun, skip their damn 20+ gold upkeep...

4) For luck, it can be difficult to plan a stable strategy... Those in the first 3-5 turns can really define your initiate start.

More so then order/Mis, I feel that luck/turmoil/Sloth tend to be difficult early on to expand quickly from income issues. The events for Turn 2-5 when still focused on your capital is highly relevant. I've had starts of normal-poor luck and tend to fall in the hole early on, then there are starts when I get insane goodness on turn 2-3. Ex. A recent EA Pan T2 gave me 200 gold, 40 gold/turn silver mine at capital AND Rams head hero. I won't even count how the game turned for me in EA Mictlan when I got a 3000 gold event, finally allowing me to plop down 2 fortified position and a "surge".

From what little I played so far, Order/misfortune tend to be pretty stable in general and events gets less annoying as you expand. Whereas for Luck, the effect is diluted when you expand as events move to low dom - enemy dom provinces. It seems you get the most benefit on Turn 3-5.

So far I tried to play it with a higher Dom (LA R'yeth works nicely in that regards), but my expansion ultimate outruns my dom and I get stuck with bad luck on the outer provinces. I think I really need to figure out the event generating mechanics and what other things luck influence to have a well thought out strategy for this.

With that, anyone ran into the above problems and have insights into them (Or other combos with luck that isn't obvious)? To be fair, I love a healthy dose of randomness, I really do like luck (makes every turn start that much more to look forward to) and I figure out ways to mitigate its shortcoming :p .

Re: Luck scale strategy
 

Take a look at the event list. That should give you a good idea about what can happen with what scales.

Re: Luck scale strategy
 

I do, and I usually set my scales to avoid the most disasterous ones (Death -3 ...etc). The problem isn't with event listing (and thank you for the database btw) but rather the event generating mechanics, strategy playing with luck and what other things luck affect besides cross breed, transformation and void gate summon.

Re: Luck scale strategy
 

If I have Luck 3, turmoil 3, I will almost always go with death 3.

Especially with a nation that may choose an oracle, lady of fortune, divine oracle, or has strong fortune teller abilities, and/or lacks death access.

Re: Luck scale strategy
 

The problem is the province selection for events. Your SC may not be in the right provinces to influence event, as you tend to park it in a fort and events tend to occur on newly captured provinces (or some pattern I cannot discern) this would dilute its usefulness in that regard. Also I think as you expand out further this also gets harder to use your SC ability and luck scale (unless you push your dom hard all game, which takes a lot of effort). Hmmm I really need to test how province event generating mechanics work.

Re: Luck scale strategy
 

The game checks each province in numerical order for events (multiple can happen in a province). Once 4 events are generated, it stops. Thus lower-number provinces have a higher chance for an event because they are checked first.

Re: Luck scale strategy
 

Irrelevent. While your empire is small, the value of your capitol vastly dwarfs the value of any other province. 80% of your income the first 10 turns is coming from your capitol. Preventing bad events there is crucial.

Re: Luck scale strategy
 

ah I see, this could be what I'm seeing! I think I can plan for this.

Re: Luck scale strategy
 

One wonders if an event cancelled counts as an event. I believe it does.

So theoretically if you covered say your 10 lowest provinces with fortune tellers you should be immune to bad events.

Re: Luck scale strategy
 

It's certainly nowhere near that deterministic. I've just looked at saved games where events have occurred outside of my 10 lowest numbered provinces.
In fact, just from that quick look, I don't see any obvious pattern. Events seem scattered throughout my empires. In the first game I checked one occurred in my highest numbered province. (Small map, but still...)

Furthermore, when event messages are given they don't appear in province order. Since every thing else in the message list is shown in the order it happens (Ritual casting, battles etc) that's at least an indication that events aren't generated in province order.

Squirrelloid, have you actually tested this? And how? I don't see a way to do it other than brute force: Huge empire, lots of turns and do some serious crunching of the results if they aren't obvious.

Re: Luck scale strategy
 

thejeff:
I believe lch confirmed the province check order by code diving, but I'd have to ask him to be sure.

My best guess is that for each possible event, it runs through your provinces in numerical order and checks to see if that event occurs there. So each event is independently checked against all your provinces until it happens.

Given most turns don't see 4 events, the effect is going to be somewhat weak.

Re: Luck scale strategy
 

Hmmmm.

Does it seem as if events occur by type?

Ie., do barbarian events occur in clumps

Barb
barb
Magic item
Magic item

Or do they occur

Barb
Magic item
Barb
Magic item

There was also discussion about times when more than 4 events would occur


I know that I have tended to see clumps of events around a province #, often seeing a "Bad event" followed by a good event in a province. But I would agree that they do not seem to clump at the low province #'s.

How about this as a testable hypothesis.

A: illwinter creates a list of provinces in a players empire.

B. Illwinter randomly picks a province from the list of provinces (that has not been previously checked). So if a empire has 10 province a rnd(10) is generated to determine the province.

C. Each province has a site mask; which can create a list of eligible events (both good and bad) that can occur in that territory.

For that province, While events < 4, each event is checked to see if EACH event occurs.

E. Check and see if an event is cancelled, due to fortunetellers (Still counts against the limit of 4)

F. If events < 4, return to b.




The only way I see to really test this hypothesis: Knowing the site masks, you would know how many events a province was eligible for. Over a large sample size, the predominance of events would correspond to each provinces # of eligible events.

Ie., suppose an empire of 4 provinces
Province has an order generator, and is only eligible for 10 random events
Province b: 5
Province c: 5
Province d: 20.

If the frequency mapped the predominance of the masks - we would consider that a pretty good indication.

Now, if on the other hand, the mechanims was roll 4 provinces, and see if eligible events occurs in those 4 provinces - then the total number of events would be lower in an empire with few number of eligible events.

Additionally, this would explain those very rare occurrences when more than 4 events occur.

One final bit of testing would be interesting. Does an empire with 2 provinces (and identical dominions and site masks get half as many luck events as an empire with 4 provinces.

Re: Luck scale strategy
 

So far in my games I haven't actually recorded hard data, I probably should.

My gut feeling is that certain provinces get events a lot more frequently, I can't discern any pattern in good/bad events like you mentioned.

I'll dig through my events and see what I come up with.

btw is there a way to rewind through each turn's message summary using my current save?

Re: Luck scale strategy
 

no...