Random Events

[Truper]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
Simply:

The severity of major bad and good events could be reduced (1500 gold showing up is pretty wierd).

Weird maybe, but a strong incentive for luck +3.

The frequency of major events could be eliminated for the first couple turns and reduced until turn 10.

I belive this is already the case.

The home province could be made permanently immune to major events (gold mine discovered, temple destroyed).).

Hmm. The home province, as the center of one's dominion, should be effected by all the scales, luck not excepted.

The scales could be rebalanced to avoid increasing rewards, for example, luck scale costing 30-35-40-40-45-50 to move from 3 unluck to 3 luck. To be more specific...

0 -> 1 luck reduces bad events by 20%
1 -> 2 luck reduces bad events by 25% (net 40%)
2 -> 3 luck reduces bad events by 33% (net 60%)

0 -> 1 order reduces bad events by 10%
1 -> 2 order reduces bad events by 11% (net 20%)
2 -> 3 order reduces bad events by 13% (net 30%)

As you can see, the reward accelerates, making +1 luck or order scales inefficient. ).

This makes no sense at all. Net 20, 40, 60. Net 10, 20, 30. Perfectly linear and rational.

Moving both scales simultaneously:

0 -> 1 luck & order reduces bad events by 28%
1 -> 2 luck & order reduces bad events by 33% (net 52%)
2 -> 3 luck & order reduces bad events by 42% (net 72%)

Thus... since negative events are so potent, and so common, a luck and/or scale is a good idea. And because of increasing returns, concentrating on one or the other is a good idea (in other words, 2 order or 2 luck is better than 1 order + 1 luck, even though both cost the same design points). If bad events are much more important than good events (as seems to be true), then moving from luck 0 to luck 1 costs as much as moving from luck 2 to luck 3, but is 66% more useful!).

Seems balanced to me. As you pointed out, sometimes you get 1500 gold. And somtimes Bogus the troll shows up...

Anyway - if good events and bad events were balanced in their potency, and reduced in severity, then the above analysis would be rendered irrelevant because the accelerating rewards of high luck/order from avoiding bad events would be countered by the diminishing rewards of additional positive events (I didn't show it, but the incremental increase in positive events from luck decreases rather than increasing with luck, and of course positive events decrease with order). But as long as negative events dominate positive events, or all events can be vastly powerful, the increasing/decreasing rewards suggest that 3 luck or 3 unluck is vastly preferable to any other luck level, and turmoil is very dangerous to any nation that needs living people, unless they have a +3 luck scale (3 turmoil, 3 luck: 48% fewer bad events). A (3 unluck, 3 order) scale seems wise, with only 12% more negative events but much better revenue (21% better? Order is +7% now, right?) as well as unrest-fighting ability for when unrest events occur (I assume that is also an effect of order?). A 3-unluck, 3-order scale is especially good when you consider that a 2-unluck, 2-order scale ALSO increases negative events by exactly the same amount (12%), but gives less revenue!).

I'm afraid I can't even follow this.

This analysis assumes luck scales do not affect event frequency, and that you are not reliant on heroes or crossbreeding. Do luck scales increase event frequency? I thought they did in Dominions I...).

To my knowledge, luck doesn't affect frequency, only order and the frequency selection at game creation.

-Cherry [/quote]

Edit: remove bolding and fix typo

[ November 18, 2003, 20:22: Message edited by: Truper ]

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
Thank you all for your prompt responses.

Gandalf, I had a lot of them in the first 40 turns. In the demo, where the human player is limited to level 4 research.

And they did include a flood of my home province. That was without any unluck scales.

I've toyed with order 1, luck 1 with Abyssia, and it's looking as if I should have gone with more order and no luck.

Also, I didn't realize the importance of productivity for Abyssia. All it seems the abyssians need is to find a source of cheap archers, preferably the shortbow kind that won't hurt their heavy infantry types much, and they will be golden.

As an aside: this is a great argument for the Humanbred Archer to be added to Blood of Humans. It really is what their military needs, which will help offset the magical weakness (and weaker heat scale) of BoH.

I know you can "tweak" the number of random events in the initial game creation process. But somehow this seems a bit like cheating.

Hmm. Maybe the developers overdid it a bit weakening positive luck (and taking away one of the disadvantages of misfortune). In Dom I the further your luck scale was from neutral, the more events you got - turmoil 3 luck 3 could (sometimes) get you enough positive events to make up for the revenue hit, while order 3 misfortune 3 wasn't nearly as safe as it is now. AFAIK this effect has been totally eliminated in Dom II. Perhaps it should have merely been reduced?

[licker]

Interesting analysis Saber.

For what it's worth, here's how the scales currently work:

For each level of order there is a reduction in the likelyhood of *any* random event.

For each level of turmoil there is an increase in the likelyhood of *any* random event.

For each level of luck the chances of your random event being good are increased by 10% (so for luck 1 its 60/40, luck 2, 70/30, ...)

For each level of misfortune the chances of your random event being bad are increased by 10% (so for misfortune 1 its 40/60, 30/70, ...)

The luck scale has no bearing on the frequency of events happening, and the order scale has no bearing on the ratio of good/bad events.

I'm not sure that the 'fix' (assuming one is required) is to change the effects of those scales. Rather I think that either the frequency of events in general could be tweeked (yes, yes, normal or rare...) or that there could be an additional weight factor attached to the existing events. Already I believe that the events are classified as 'major' and 'minor' (the scale may be larger...), and as such it perhaps makes sense to restrict 'major' events to only provinces where the luck scale is at +3 or -3. Perhaps there should be a small (~5% per level of luck/misfortune) that a 'minor' event is promoted to a 'major' event. A fix like this tones down the extremes while still preserving the flavor of the scales.

Again, my concern is that cost of taking luck or misfortune (and order/turmoil) is not balanced with the current effects of the events. This has been tested to some extent by others (particularly the luck+3 turmoil+3 senario) to show that it is too risky in a competative game to go with +luck and -order, and further that order+3 misfortune+3 are probably the optimal settings for just about anyone. There's nothing de facto wrong with a set up like this, but for a game that otherwise seems to strive for interesting risk/reward senarios, having this senario be so tilted to one side belittles the achievments of the rest of the scales.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Truper:
This makes no sense at all. Net 20, 40, 60. Net 10, 20, 30. Perfectly linear and rational.

The numbers I gave are the incremental improvements... just as going from defense skill 1 to defense skill 2 is worthless and going from defense skill 12 to defense skill 13 is very valuable, the proportional difference between luck 2 and 3 is much greater than the proportional difference between unluck 2 and 3, in terms of the number of bad events that occur.

-Cherry

[ November 18, 2003, 21:41: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[Truper]

Saber:

Perhaps I am especially dense today, but I still can't follow your argument. Let's see if we can't pin down where my problem lies. I'm more comfortable with the way Licker stated things, so tell me whether or not you agree with the following:

Luck Scale %chance of bad event

+3 20
+2 30
+1 40
0 50
-1 60
-2 70
-3 80

And if you do agree that this is the way it works,is your argument then that going from luck +2 to luck +3 reduces the chance of a bad event by 1/3 but going from luck -2 to luck -3 only increases the chance by 1/7?

I apologise for the format - when I type it out its a nice clear table, but for some reason the board refuses to post it that way.

[ November 18, 2003, 22:50: Message edited by: Truper ]

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Truper:
is your argument then that going from luck +2 to luck +3 reduces the chance of a bad event by 1/3 but going from luck -2 to luck -3 only increases the chance by 1/7?

Bingo! =) For the same reason, in Diablo II there were certain skills that had increasing returns - like the Amazon evade skill, a percent chance of evading all incoming attacks. Going from 0% to 10% is a 10% jump, but not very good. However, going from 80% to 90% is a 10% jump too, but of huge importance... because the correct way to evaluate the utility of the skill is 1/(1-evade). So 10% evade increases your power to 111%, 80% evade increases your power to 500%, and 90% increases your power to 1000% of normal.

As a result, Blizzard makes the evade skill give diminishing returns, like 33% evade for the first level, then 40% evade, then 46%, 51%, 56%, 60%, and so forth, or something like that... so that the incremental power increase stays fairly flat after the initial level.

-Cherry

[Truper]

Ok, now I understand where you are coming from, but I regard things diffently. It seems to me that "avoiding bad events" is an incomplete way of looking at the luck scale, and I'll still be perfectly happy to go from luck +2 to luck +3 whenever I can afford it. In fact, I enjoy a positive luck scale - nothing like opening up the new turn to discover that one of my fantically devoted disciples has found some magic trinket or other and brought it to my lab, or that "great riches have been found"

My only real problem with the mechanics of luck at this point is that order - the only scale that has any major effect on income - interferes with the luck I enjoy having.