Game balance suggestions.

[General Tacticus]

Originally posted by Wauthan:
Well it might make sense that luck dominion adds to gold income. Even the taxcollector gets lucky I guess, but doesn't that make your citizens unlucky? But the present big "bonus" of a Turmoil/Luck combination is the chance of getting a very good streak of random events. I often use this combo and while it's a real gamble I often get a lot of good effects. Then earthquake/hurricane/vinemen invasion strikes my major production/gold province.

Perhaps it would be better to make the random events slightly less random so that only a very unlucky dominion often sees the major disasters and only a strong luck dominion gets the best advantages more than once or twice?

This is already the case. Your luck scale determines which subset of events you can experience...

[Windreaper]

Originally posted by Catquiet:
Maybe they should make Pangaea immune to turmoil tax reduction the way Ulm smiths are immune to drain.

That's the best suggestion for improving Pangaea, I've ever heard. It's weird how it never crossed my mind. In addition to adding strat move 2 for satyr hoplites would actually make the nation somewhere near competitive (it will prove to be hard to win with pan in dom2 as blood magic got nerfed).

[ January 09, 2004, 14:30: Message edited by: Windreaper ]

[SurvivalistMerc]

Has anyone listed those events that are only available in certain luck scales?

I seem to recall getting hit by earthquakes and 1/4 population floods even when I took luck. These seem to me to be the worst events. I realize there are some major luck events that you can only have with extreme luck scale, but really I think reducing the number of very severe bad events with even luck-1 but especially at luck-2 or higher would go a long way to make luck more viable.

The barbarian pillage some of us think shouldn't have a pillage effect if you kill the barbarian invaders.

Knights are really just a nuisance unless they happen early in the game to a critical province.

In some ways, taking bad luck is like taking death dominion. You lose important parts of your empire over time, never to be regained, at a variable rate. Well...you will anyway with common random events...I guess bad luck just accelerates the process.

[Karacan]

In my opinion (and mine only ), the luck scale is simply sub-par to the order scale.

Even with luck+3, you only have a 80% chance of a random event being a good one... that means that every fifth event is a bad one. Since bad events are usually much worse than average good events, I usually go for order scale to reduce the amount of events at all happening to me - I am more scaerd of floods killing of my population than looking forward to getting a random magic item and a couple of gold for free, as well in early as in late game.

[General Tacticus]

Originally posted by Karacan:
In my opinion (and mine only ), the luck scale is simply sub-par to the order scale.

But it is so much more FUN !!

Even with luck+3, you only have a 80% chance of a random event being a good one... that means that every fifth event is a bad one. Since bad events are usually much worse than average good events, I usually go for order scale to reduce the amount of events at all happening to me - I am more scaerd of floods killing of my population than looking forward to getting a random magic item and a couple of gold for free, as well in early as in late game.

I am not so sure of that. Don't forget that the luck scale influence also what events you can receive. And that the big bad AI's love to send you bad "natural" events. For example, in my AAR, playing at order -3 luck +1, I have in 50 turns had :
- two emigration events (-20% pop), one in my capital
- two events that took 50 gold each
- quite a few hurricanes, but some of those I suspect are gifts from the AI's
- 6 attacks by independants on my provinces (dark vines, barbarians, vampires,...), 4 of which succeeded.
- Various bad omens, growing unrest, and lack of faith
- Two raids on my slave dungeons to steal my virgins

On the other hand, I was gifted with two labs, one fortress, 600 gold, an average of two handfuls of magic gems per turn, three + 5 province defense, and one gold site (arena I think). Oh, and an animist as well.

I am quite happy with the results : My events are mostly good, and while the worst one was harsh (that emigration in my capital is costing me 30 gold/turn for the rest of the game), some of the good ones were very good (+500 gold, arena site, free hill fortress, free labs). Plus, that extra gem income is coming quite steadily and usefuly...

[ January 09, 2004, 17:15: Message edited by: General Tacticus ]

[Gandalf Parker]

I think that like alot of other things in this game the Luck scale is something that either fits a persons mode of play or it doesnt. I like Luck but the events can swing you back and forth alot. Some people like to play this game with long running well thought out strategys and plans. Luck is not something they would like. Im not so good at planning so I do better with quickly making use of random changes in luck both Pro and Con.

[Windreaper]

Hmm, I got some additions, too.

Devs, please put Clam of Pearls and Staff of Storms to Const 6 and consider increasing the cost of the clam. I hope I don't have to explain the staff but the clam probably needs an explanation.

By converting all your gems into water (easiest with water nations, naturally) and making solely clams and again turning the astral back to water will get you an astral income of over 100 by turn 40. Couple this with concentrated research and you'll be casting Wish per turn from turn ~40 on. This strategy has been used extensively in finnish PBEM games and has pretty much always resulted in a win. We've been trying to bug the occasional dev at #dominions with the issue but it'd appear that it's still unchanged in Dom2.