Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer

[Truper]

I have been having pretty good results with order 1 luck 3 - I seem to get some of the best of both worlds that way. I *enjoy* lucky dominion, and this influences how I think about it, but I'd be truly afraid to take an order 3/misfortune 3 race into an MP.

One thing I have noticed is that some provinces seem to be more influenced by luck than others. I've had a single province have an immigration event twice and bring in a magic item and 3 sets of gems all in the first 15 turns, but other nearby provinces have no events at all. I don't know why this should be - but when people report a home province thats constantly bringing disaster, I wonder if they just didn't get an unlucky province placement, as it were.

[PvK]

Yes, Illwinter has posted a few times that the events only occur if certain conditions exist in the target province.

A tweak or two may still be in order. For instance, I think it'd be reasonable that if you have positive Luck scale in a province, it should be impossible or extremely unlikely to suffer from random catastrophes that kill more than say 5% of the population. Then if you took luck and kept your dominion strong in your home province, you wouldn't have to worry about getting bLasted by a bad event if you took a positive Luck scale, and that would be a good reason to get points for taking a negative Luck scale.

PvK

[Norfleet]

The fundamental problem with bad events is that the bad events are incredibly devastating and often potential game-enders. Meanwhile, the good events tend to be cute, but have little real influence. A few gems here and there, some useless units in the middle of nowhere to increase your upkeep costs until you get them killed (which isn't a good thing!), and othersuch. Nothing great. If there was a luck 3 event that went something to the effect of "Everyone dies. You win.", then I'm pretty sure everyone would be taking Turmoil/Luck. As it stands, the bad events can pretty much be a game-over, and Luck doesn't give you protection, since they happen just as often, if not more.

So it's not much of a surprise there when the prevailing attitude becomes "in for a penny, in for a pound".

[void]

I have been having really bad results in my Last game--O+3 L-3
At turn 2,7,13, a fire destroyed my lab
Turn 6, earthquake shocked temple
Before turn 30, at least 7 barbarian horde and 2 knights attacked my manor
most absurd one is , adjoint two provinces take turns got attack by barb horde in 4 turns in succession,my relief troops are forced run to here and run to there,run to back and back again..

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by void:
I have been having really bad results in my Last game--O+3 L-3
At turn 2,7,13, a fire destroyed my lab
Turn 6, earthquake shocked temple
Before turn 30, at least 7 barbarian horde and 2 knights attacked my manor
most absurd one is , adjoint two provinces take turns got attack by barb horde in 4 turns in succession,my relief troops are forced run to here and run to there,run to back and back again..

Wow, you're sure lucky. But at least you deserve it. And losing a lab here and there, a temple, a few barbarians, these are simply nuisances. They don't compare to losing half your population.

[Arralen]

What your boys are missing in this discussion entirely is the following:

code:

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10.6 #eventisrare <percent>

Random events are divided into two categories, common and rare.

This value is the chance of a random event to be a rare one. 

Default is 15.

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So it looks to me that the game-breaker events should only have 15% per event to occure at all. Than again what I've seen myself from games with Luck=0 (or worse) suggest that at least some of them may not be correctly flagged as "rare" ??

Anyone for a test with Turmoil=3, Luck=-3, "#eventisrare 0" to tell us which events did/didn't show up??

Would do it myself but I'm busy today ...

A.

[Teraswaerto]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
A few gems here and there, some useless units in the middle of nowhere to increase your upkeep costs until you get them killed (which isn't a good thing!), and othersuch. Nothing great.

Getting 1500 gold and level 6 magic item(s) early is pretty great. Yeah, it doesn't happen every time, but luck is luck, it's supposed to be unpredictable. I think that limiting the worst events to negative luck scales would be enough.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Teraswaerto:

quote:

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Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:

OTOH Luck+3 without Order is still a good recipe for catastrophic outcomes. Plagues events that kill 50+% of your capital's pop shouldn't occur with Luck+3. And even then, they should be restricted to dominions of Death.

Death scale hardly needs to be made less desirable. Limited to misfortune would be far better.

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Requires growth-0 or below, misfortune-1 or below?

I'd like to see a list of all disastrous events, and write a suggested list of scale requirements for all of them. All - yes, I mean all - the mass-kill events would require luck-0 or below. That would make luck dominions really worth something - although you could still get some bad events, maybe even seriously bad ones like invasions, you couldn't get your home province permanently crippled as long as you have dominion there and nobody is casting Baleful Star on you or something like that.

Turmoil/luck costs you a LOT of gold compared to order/misfortune, and you get some minor good events and about the same chance of disasters (or possibly more). Let luck rule out the major disasters, and turmoil/luck will get you disaster protection and some minor good events - it would at least be viable for nations that have required turmoil (Spring&Autumn, Barbarian Kings) or luck (Tuatha), or benefit extra from turmoil or luck (standard Pangaea).

Maybe some more good events would be nice too. "An itinerant healer cured all battle afflictions from your troops in (province)" would be a nice one. Or how about "A mysterious power removed curses from your troops in (province)"? Something that you can't predictably get from anything else, but you can occasionally get it by luck.

And how about, instead of/in addition to militia randomly joining you, useful commanders randomly joining you? Few people would turn up their nose at a free Sage, let alone an adept of any metal order or most other indy mages.

You occasionally get free sites with Luck - but they're always mines that give minor gold or resource bonuses. Why not allow any level 1 site (or possibly only those without harmful effects) to appear - discovered - for free? Or even level 2 sites, rarely, in a sufficiently strong luck and/or magic dominion?

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Teraswaerto:

quote:

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Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:

OTOH Luck+3 without Order is still a good recipe for catastrophic outcomes. Plagues events that kill 50+% of your capital's pop shouldn't occur with Luck+3. And even then, they should be restricted to dominions of Death.

Death scale hardly needs to be made less desirable. Limited to misfortune would be far better.

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That wouldn't make death scale less desirable, since plagues can already happen in a death dominion. And as it is now, I don't find death scale particularly bad.

The point is to make growth scale more desirable, especially if you play a theme that requires a bit of turmoil. I'm trying to make Diabolical Faith viable in MP, and unless I pick a Lady of Fortune for my pretender, it seems I can't get more than ~15k pop in my capital by turn 40 with turmoil+1, growth+1 and luck+3.

Now if someone knows that plagues can't happen with growth +2 ot +3, please tell me - I'd really like to know.

[ January 25, 2004, 17:01: Message edited by: Nagot Gick Fel ]

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
You occasionally get free sites with Luck - but they're always mines that give minor gold or resource bonuses. Why not allow any level 1 site (or possibly only those without harmful effects) to appear - discovered - for free?

There's already a site like this - a Deep Cave or something that nets you 1 earth gem/turn.