Thoughts on making "luck" equally attractive

[Chris_Byler]

Not all events give an item, I don't think the lab size would necessarily be a problem there. (Although it still wouldn't hurt to raise it for people who want to play obscenely huge games.) Since the events happen after your own forging, you would never lose a deliberately forged item because you got too many event items, only the reverse (which is just equivalent to no event at all).

When I suggested 50 as the cap, I was deliberately intending it to be a number that you *wouldn't* actually reach - so that for programming purposes there might still be a cap, but for gameplay purposes there effectively wouldn't. But maybe on those 1000+ province maps, a T3/L3 empire could actually have 50 events, I don't know. At that point the game would probably be out of its competitive stages anyway.


A player with a mere 80 provinces would be very unlikely to get 10 events, I think, let alone to have them all be indy attacks, even if they have heavy misfortune without any order at all. To get 10 events of any kind with any regularity you'd probably need hundreds of provinces, and even then, most would be unrest, loss of tax revenue, population death, gem loss, building destruction, and other minor annoyances.


Oh yeah: if IW is reading this thread, IMO troop events should always come with a leader, if they don't already. Don't make the player waste a turn (or more than one) getting a commander there to pick them up - some of those troops are going to be slow enough to reach the front as it is (where they may or may not be good for anything more than arrow bait/lancebreakers). Even a generic indy commander would be enough to lead the units somewhere else where they can be placed under someone else's command.


P.S. I just had an idea for a new event: {Commander}'s magic item {item} has mysteriously lost its power and crumbled to dust. (Artifacts should be immune; drain scale makes it more likely or is required.) Considering the fact that your luck scale is unlucky for enemies invading your dominion, this could make it rather unpleasant to invade a lucky Ulm. (Or worse, a lucky sea nation!)

Also, terrain-dependent events that work similarly to Lure of the Deep/Beckoning, or have units buried by avalanches, rockslides, drowned in bogs or get lost until they die of exposure in wastelands. (Appropriate survival abilities protect.)

Without reform to the event caps etc., new events won't necessarily fix the order/luck balance. But they're still cool. Why shouldn't bad luck in harsh terrain include the sometimes-deadly mishaps that go with that terrain?

Given the effect of enemy luck, unlucky events that strike directly at an army in the field would actually help a lucky nation defend its dominion from invaders - in addition to indies attacking your rear and potentially cutting your supply lines, you'd also potentially lose troops to deadly accidents and lose magic items *at the front* that might be hard to replace quickly before the next battle. In the meantime the lucky nation is getting free reinforcements to help fight you, and a hero to lead them.