[Keir Maxwell]

Done a couple more tests with less success which proved as much about the problems with luck as mod balence issues.

I may have underdone it slightly in my 0.02 mod. Part of the idea coming in was that LC are overcosted and I think I let that idea slip when I made the cost 25% higher cost in gp and better. So I'm to give the first 2pts of prec and the +1 def for free. That bring the gold cost of the LC down to 22gps. The trouble with the LC being more expensive is their primary role is as archers and if they cost too much then you would be unwise to use them early (foot bow instead) which is what I want to avoid. Latter you generally have the resources for HC so you tend to concentrate on them so the time to build up the LC is early. If necessary I'll take all the bonus's bar the precision one away to keep the cost down.

The other thing I'm going to try is replacing the Lance with a Javelin and see what happens. Hopefully they will shoot with the bow at long range and use the Javelin when close. If they will only use one and I can make it the comp bow thats fine as what I'm trying to do is dump the lance without giving them two hand to hand attacks. It may not work.

When I tried using a pretender other than the Lady of Fortune I got severly manhandled by luck - 1/5th pop emmigrated from capital t.9 1/5th from biggest other 3 turns late, plague, Trog attack, all in the first 16 turns. I was also been attacked by two neighbours early (bad starting position) and had Kau Feng (PoD) feebleminded by a random arrow shot as he lurked in the back wearing rainbow armour. I decide to give up on this one when my prophet bought it even though militarily I was still putting up a fight and taking the war to the enemy - I just didn't have enough gold coming in and hadn't got a second castle even though I was using the cheap wizard tower. The random events did not destroy me and there were good ones (total of 150gps in cash) but I end up with that feelling described by so many - I'm paying for maximum luck scales and I still get bad luck.

I went back to LoF and things went much better. I have never had a significant bad event in my capital using LoF and while this is probably just luck she has become my lucky taliesmen. In fact I think the only reason I have a far kinder view of luck than most is using the Lady of Fortune. Have I just been really lucky with her or does she have an ability to stop bad events in the province she is in?

As luck issues are making it hard to get a good take on this I'm going to start using a simple luck mod. Basically its Saber Cherries idea of +-13% luck/misfortune on quality of events with no other changes to scales. This means with luck3 you have a 89% chance of an event being good - I think it was 95% in dom1 so this is not that extreme compared to what many of us are used to playing with.

I'll post the relevant parts of this to the luck/order thread.

Cheers

Keir

[ January 17, 2004, 21:06: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]