Big Problem - Unbalanced random events

[Raen]

I think it's very much a problem. In a game against the AI, you could always either play it out for the fun of seeing if you can recover from it or start a new game.

In a PBEM game, however, where I had committed to playing for several weeks, I would be very upset if something like that happened in the first 20 moves.

I think the events happen way too often anyway, even with the rare setting. Perhaps another very rare setting would work.

The way it is now, I play with the rare setting and feel almost forced to take Order +3 so that they happen what I consider a reasonable amount of the time. That's just silly.

[Teraswaerto]

The possibility of losing a pretender to a random attack is not a problem that needs fixing because: A)It's very rare, and B) you can prevent it easily by having retreat orders on your frail pretender. Or you could have him guarded.

[Raen]

Originally posted by Teraswaerto:
The possibility of losing a pretender to a random attack is not a problem that needs fixing because: A)It's very rare, and B) you can prevent it easily by having retreat orders on your frail pretender. Or you could have him guarded.

Fine, so pick another random event that can't be defended against.

The point remains there are some of us who absolutely loathe random events and feel they happen way too often in this game.

As I said before, having to set events to rare and setting order to +3 just so I can get what I feel is a *normal* amount of random events seems very silly.

[Teraswaerto]

I've found that with order 3 they are rare even with the common setting. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

Anyway, I do think something should be done to make luck a better choice, maybe making the catastrophic events misfortune only.

[Truper]

I've found that with order 3, random events rare, that I get hardly any events at all. So what's "normal"? One event every 30 turns or so?

To me, the real problem with the scales as currently set up is that order is the only one with a serious effect on income. Since order 3 is therefore mandatory, you might as well mine misfortune for the points.

My preference would be to have order, productivity, and growth all have the same effect on cash - that way there might actually be variety in the scales that people chose to maximize.

[Raen]

Originally posted by Truper:
I've found that with order 3, random events rare, that I get hardly any events at all. So what's "normal"? One event every 30 turns or so?

I find they happen more often than once every 30 turns...more like once every 15 or so. And that would be "rare" in my mind.

But there's really no need for us to argue about it. If they would simply put in a "very rare" or even an "off" switch for events, we could all choose whatever we liked.

Many games with random evenets allow you to turn them off entirely since it's pretty well-known that there is a sizeable chunk of gamers who detest them.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Sammual:
I would like to see the larger bad random events limited to Misfortune 3 and scale them down from there. I don't like losseing 1/4 of my capitals population on turn 3 with luck 1.

Yeah, I suggested something like that in another thread - a luck system that would classify all events as major and minor, and yield an overall probability like this:

ML=major lucky event
SL=small lucky event
SU=small unlucky event
MU=major unlucky event

Luck scale values and overall event probabilities (assuming an event occurs):

Luck..ML...SL....|....SU...MU
+3......40....40....|....18....02
+2......32....39....|....26....05
+1......24....36....|....32....08
+0......15....35....|....35....15
-1.......08....32....|....36....24
-2.......05....26....|....39....32
-3.......02....18....|....40....40

So with +1 luck, only 8% of the events would by major unlucky events.

I agree that if I spend 40 points on Luck 1, I want a major reduction in barbarian invasions and vineman uprisings... but I don't really expect that to suddenly make me immune to bad weather, for example=)

-Cherry