Been said before, but... luck vs misfortune

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Zurai:
1 plague bad event
1 hurricane bad event

Are Caelum and one of the death nations in your game? Both of these events are also spell effects.

[atul]

Originally posted by Zurai:
3 "adventursome populace" (-20% pop) bad events
...
Nine of the fifteen bad events (60% even) carried huge population loss penalties. Only four of them (26.7%) were what I would call "minor" bad events (witch's curse, -50 gold, -100 gold).

If I remember correctly, one of the devs in some previous thread hinted that the 'population just leaving' -bad event would become common bad event (being normally rare) when your turmoil is 2 or more. Or was it barbarian invasion?

Anyway, what I'm getting at, is that I keep having this feeling about a deeper synergy between luck scale and other scales than meets the eye. That is, with positive other scales luck brings more goodies than with negative other scales. I've had some SP's with a zero-cost pretender and all scales about +2, and local landlords just line up to give me free provincial defenders, mines and fortified cities. All the yummy stuff. But that's nothing sure, just a feeling I've got.

Been thinking trying sometime a nation that prefers heat/cold 3, taking a minimum cost (viable) pretender and maxing the scales. Don't know where to start, though. Caelum with earth3/4 Natajara, maybe?

Originally posted by Demosthenes:

But doesn't the game first determine which province is having an event and then check the Luck scale of THAT province in order to choose which event?

I'd think so also. Makes invading all those order/misfortune nations a very interesting chore if you're with turmoil/luck. In one SP I was playing S&A theme of T'ien Ch'i and invading deep into misfortune-Ermor's territory. Thought I'd be safe with two provinces to retreat, but what do you know. The same turn undead horde forced my army to flee, both retreat provinces suffered a bad luck event. One was barbarian horde, other invading knights. There goes my army...

[Zurai]

Originally posted by atul:
If I remember correctly, one of the devs in some previous thread hinted that the 'population just leaving' -bad event would become common bad event (being normally rare) when your turmoil is 2 or more. Or was it barbarian invasion?

Anyway, what I'm getting at, is that I keep having this feeling about a deeper synergy between luck scale and other scales than meets the eye. That is, with positive other scales luck brings more goodies than with negative other scales.

So in other words, luck costs twice as many creation points as any other scale (at least), but misfortune doesn't give back twice as many.

Luck needs to be stronger *independant* on other scales. It's cool that some events are based on your scales, but it's not cool that good luck vs bad luck is so unbalanced. A positive luck nation should never be put into the position where they're looking at those 40 points and saying "I wish my magic was higher instead of having luck +1". They should be able to point at it and see a tangible benefit. Right now having a small, erratic extra gem income - which is what positive luck has amounted to for me so far - is nowhere even close to being a match for 9 population loss events.

EDIT: To further clarify my point, every other scale has a quantifiable effect that you can count on game after game. Order raises your income 7%, Growth raises supply and income and population growth rate, etc. The only quantifiable for Luck is that you get more events total - but there's no guarantee that the events will be good or bad, and there's no gaurantee whether the events will be major or minor. Obviously the nature of the beast defies *some* quantification, but there should be some kind of definable effect. Maybe luck could influence something else about the nation? Decreased unrest, for instance - people are happy when they feel lucky.

PS. Yes Caelum was in my game, but the hurricane was on a pretty early turn. I'm fairly confident it wasn't a spell from them.

[ February 16, 2004, 02:57: Message edited by: Zurai ]

[Demosthenes]

Personaly I like that "Luck" works just like... hmmmm... could it be .... luck?

There is an implicit sense of chance. Perhaps the one game you are using for reference here is not indicative of all the "Luck" that you might have?

Originally posted by Zurai:
To put it bluntly, that *is not worth it*. The huge population loss events need to A) be MUCH rarer with positive Luck, B) be impossible to get with positive Luck, or C) be counterbalanced by an equal or near-equal chance of the +5000 population event (which I *have* seen once, so I know it exists. That was in a Luck 3 game, though). Currently taking extra Luck is absolutely worthless because it has no discernable effect on decreasing your bad luck, and tends to only get you minor increases of gems or gold.

For the record, this is over the course of 30 turns with Turmoil 3. Yes, I realized Turmoil 3 increases the chances of events happening, but with luck +1 I'm supposed to have a 60/40 good luck/bad luck split on events. It actually came out to 50/50 with the bad events being much, much worse.

Luck is Luck. It fits some people and other people it does not fit. Personally I don't take Luck unless I take it all the way. And I don't usually take Luck unless I feel the need to, because as it has been said, luck is luck.

I much prefer this system of luck to the previous system, as it makes misfortune more of a detriment than it was previously with Order.

I wouldn't take any amount of Turmoil without 3 Luck, as it's just asking for a beating. (Unless of course you are Ermor)

I still believe the weighting of the events need to be adjusted and perhaps the % given a minor tweak (more in line with Cherry's Scale 13 vs 10).

And just for reference. I often get very bad luck in MP games, same as everyone else Often times I think Luck has it out for me when I don't give the ol' horseshoe a kiss.

[ February 16, 2004, 05:13: Message edited by: Zen ]

[PvK]

I've been having a very lucky luck+3 (IIRC) game as Mictlan.

I've had a few population hits, but only on pretty low-population provinces (which is mostly all I had except my capital for most of the early game). I got attacked by knights and barbarians on my frontiers a couple of times. Then just some unrest events, IIRC.

On the plus side, I got:

A soul contract worth 80 gems, which has provided the backbone of my army, and my main means for defeating miasmatic C'tis and then Caelum.

Two other major magic items I had no means to forge.

Bunches of gems, usually without curses, including a useful number of gems which I had no other source for, and which let me cast the seeking spells that found income-bringing sites to get them.

Two increases of +10 in provincial defense, one on my home province, and one on my main chokepoint province, which brought it from 18 to 28 - very nice.

Several gold windfalls, which I could really use.

Three national heroes (very useful for Mictlan).

One milita army with Holy-3 priest (they were welcome, especially the priest).

Some other good stuff - celebrations, etc., and probably some things I'm forgetting.

In other words, especially with the soul contract, but also for the heroes and other stuff, I think luck actually tipped the scales and got me out of a dead-end stalemate battle and put me in #2 position.

No doubt this is my own actual good fortune in this game, too.

PvK

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Zurai:
PS. Yes Caelum was in my game, but the hurricane was on a pretty early turn. I'm fairly confident it wasn't a spell from them.

If it happened after turn 10, then it probably was a spell. Caelum can easily have level 4 in any given school within 10 turns of the start.

[CharonJr]

After getting killed as R'lyeh with Turmmoil3/Luck3 due to getting lots of pop reducing events I am looking at Order3/Luck3 in my current R'lyeh game and have to say that I like the results till now.

Once I finish my current AAR with those scales I will count the good/bad events. But at the moment I have the feeling that I get more events than I would have thought I would.

CharonJr

[Arryn]

Originally posted by CharonJr:
I am looking at Order3/Luck3 in my current R'lyeh game and have to say that I like the results till now.

I've had pretty decent results myself with R'lyeh and Order+3/Luck+3.