luck events

[Minrhael]

In an attempt to best learn how to design my beloved Tuatha, I'm starting to log events by frequency and effect based on my scale choices. It would be really nice if I knew which events could only be received with certain scales. Does anyone have such a list?

I had originally typed up the first 31 turns and every event that occured here, but since it's not actually enough data to go on, I just decided to summarize and list my questions:

I used a 3 Turmoil 3 Luck 1 Production 1 Growth 1 Magic pretender. Does a Magic 3 Pretender get more gems from the +gem events than a Magic 1?

Turn7: Faith decreases crops grow quicker (this appears to lower dominion but increases what? supplies permanently or growth? if growth it's only temporary and would seem useless, so a negative event)

Turn16: 1st national hero Bernlad the Green Knight. Now I play Tuatha a LOT, and I think this is the latest I've ever gotten my first national hero. I usually only play luck 1, with luck 3 I was expecting at least 2 by now. Anyone got that formula handy?

As of turn 31 I still have only 1 national hero, good ol' Bernlad the leadership challenged who uses unfair magic armor to win tournaments. By now I would normally have 2 heroes in most Tuatha games I've played, am beginning to wonder if there isn't a problem with luck3 not getting heroes faster.

3 times in this game I gained zealots in the form of 114 militia total. All 3 times this occured in the same province. Is this just a remarkable coincidence or is there a chance of seeding problems or something like that (it's been many years since my programming days but I seem to recall problems with proper randomization vaguely, but for all I know they may have taken care of that by now).

All told after 31 turns I've had 35 events if I counted correctly with events set to common and turmoil 3. Seems a bit low even though my average number of provinces during those turns is pretty low. I got hemmed in early, average #provinces is 6.4. And there were several turns after I hit my high of 11 provinces where there were no events at all.

Positives: 1125 gold (effectively 1025 after temple lost, 925 for most races), 25 PD, Bane Blade, 11 instances of +gems so about 25-30 gems, 30 flagellants, 114 militia (most of which diseased before I could move them out!).

Negatives: 3 instances of faith decrease crop growth increase which I can't think how to score, seems negative to me, 3 troop cursings, 2 earthquakes (1 in capital with a 1/4 population loss followed by a monster attack, 1 temple lost), +140 unrest (not counting unrest reductions as they occured in provinces lacking unrest).

When you add up the money lost from putting those 2 luck points into order, I'd get +14% income. In this game where I got hemmed in in a low income corner, I made ~9000 gold income total through 31 turns. That would be +1260 gold, which is already more than I got through my luck events. In a normal game I would expect a much greater return from order and the difference would be even more noticeable. Also, there was a significant amount of gold lost to unrest increasing events. Until I get a chance to get more data this is obviously very inconclusive, but my initial feeling is that luck is not going to compare well to order unless luck 3 gets additional benefits like eliminating negative events in the capital or eliminating all the worst events altogether.

In addition my 26th turn had 3 events:
1) Superstition: +52 unrest in a luck 2 province (might have been +50 if I had 2 unrest in the province beforehand but it should have had none)

2) Ill Omen +29 unrest in a luck 1 province (believe province was higher luck and the ill omen caused it to drop)

3) Earthquake in capital (luck 3), 1/4 population killed, troglodyte attack after things "calmed".

This really seems like a ridiculous turn for someone who chose luck3. I'd like to see a max of 1 bad event per turn at luck 2 & 3, and 2 bad events at luck 0 & 1, with a max of 1 good event for nations choosing misfortune 1-3.

Anyway, those are all just initial reactions, I intend to get a lot more data here soon; it would really help if I could get that list of events if it's been made. My apologies if this formats poorly or comes out terribly disorganized, it's really time for me to go to bed now!

[Chris Byler]

One comment on this: you compare the gold you got from luck to what you would have made from order, but you neglect to mention that (a) order doesn't get you any gems, items or heroes, and (b) order without luck will get bad events too.

Has anyone done a series of tests with, say, every 0-point combination of order and luck (order 3 misfortune 3, order 2 misfortune 2, ..., turmoil 3 luck 3)? If the bad events outweigh (even though they don't outnumber) the good events for lucky nations, how bad are they for unlucky ones?

Does anyone know if national heroes cost upkeep? They could be a pretty big factor if they are upkeep free (if not, then they are "just" as valuable as an equivalent unit - although some of them don't really have an equivalent unit, such as Auluudh the Aboleth, Chuzrael the Demonbred Slayer, any of the level 5 uberpriests).

[PhilD]

I'm right in the middle of a Tuatha game myself (Cradle map, with Poor world settings and Hard research settings - this makes for a very slow game!).

I only have Luck 1, but got 3 heroes in the first 50 turns or so. The heroes will always appear at very random times (except if you use Misfortune 3, where they should not appear at all): even with Luck 3, your chance of a hero each turn is only 6%; this means there will be a lot of variation, from one game to the next, in the time it takes to get your heroes.

I don't keep track of all the events I get, but I believe even Luck 1 brought me many more good events than bad. Nothing major, but I did get several militia/flagellant events (two Militia events in the same province, a few turns from each other), lots of free gems (including the "witch cursed some of your units when you took her gems", sometimes in provinces where I had no units), one free Death mage (good thing; it was early in the game), and various gold events. No major bad events in my capital (though I did get a "rain took out 25% of the pop" in another province).

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Minrhael:
Turn16: 1st national hero Bernlad the Green Knight. Now I play Tuatha a LOT, and I think this is the latest I've ever gotten my first national hero. I usually only play luck 1, with luck 3 I was expecting at least 2 by now. Anyone got that formula handy?

Getting a hero isn't really a random event, so to speak: It's not affected by random event frequency, only by luck scale.

The chance of getting a hero is equal to 3% + your luck scale. So if you have luck-3, you have a 6% noncumulative chance of receiving a hero every turn while supplies Last. Therefore, on average, you can expect to receive a hero every 16-17 turns. The chance of NOT receiving a hero in 16-17 turns is equal to 0.94^17, or 34%.

The frequency with which you are receiving heroes is roughly par for the course.

[CayseP]

When you add up the money lost from putting those 2 luck points into order, I'd get +14% income. In this game where I got hemmed in in a low income corner, I made ~9000 gold income total through 31 turns. That would be +1260 gold, which is already more than I got through my luck events.

Assuming that your scales had time to affect all taken provinces instantly. 10% would probably be a more realistic estimate... depending on neighbours and dominion str.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by CayseP:

quote:

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When you add up the money lost from putting those 2 luck points into order, I'd get +14% income. In this game where I got hemmed in in a low income corner, I made ~9000 gold income total through 31 turns. That would be +1260 gold, which is already more than I got through my luck events.

Assuming that your scales had time to affect all taken provinces instantly. 10% would probably be a more realistic estimate... depending on neighbours and dominion str.

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True, but this is even more of an issue with turmoil/luck - IIRC event frequency depends on your *God's* turmoil scale, not the province's, while the chance of an event being good or bad depends on the province's luck scale.

In other words, your turmoil gives you more events even before your luck dominion spreads to the places they will occur. So don't conquer provinces under a misfortune dominion until *after* you have preached them to yours, or get them hammered by turmoil/misfortune.

Any chance that a future patch will fix this problem with order/turmoil? Calculate an event chance for each province, accumulate a list of potential events and then prune it if it is over the cap (or just remove the cap, let events not scale to irrelevance on big maps). Letting your turmoil follow your luck instead of precede it might reduce some of the bitterness of people getting too many negative events with strong luck - because they'd get more of their events in provinces that actually *had* the luck.