Order vs. Luck in End Game

[Chris Byler]

I'd like to see more diversity in scale selection and I think that the Order/Luck issue is too one-sided at present.

The most *visible* way to improve luck would be to remove the event cap (or greatly raise it, say 20 events/turn maximum). But if that isn't done (and maybe even if it is), I'd like to see luck have subtle pervasive effects on lots of things.

For example, when a check is made to see if stealthy units are caught, the province's luck or misfortune dominion is applied as a modifier to the patrollers' chances. Luck could also affect patrolling for unrest - you just happened to stumble across that bandit camp.

I also like Cheezeninja's idea of having luck affect blood hunting - after all, blood hunting is highly *random*, and even a skilled mage sometimes *just happens* to find many good blood slaves, or to find no blood slaves.

But I think the best solution is to remove the event cap, or raise it enough that there could be enough events per turn to have a significant impact on even a large, late-game empire (which doesn't really care about getting 25 militia or 3 magic gems). The negative synergy between Order and Luck is a neat idea - but Luck doesn't provide nearly enough benefits to make it a competitive option.

Improving Luck would also indirectly strengthen themes that are forced to take Luck (Last of the Tuatha) or Turmoil (Spring & Autumn, Barbarian Kings), or that benefit from Luck or Turmoil in other ways (standard Pangaea, anything with a Lord of the Wild pretender, anything that expects to use Cross Breeding much).

And if Luck starts to affect patrolling and blood hunting, blood nations might want to take the Luck/Turmoil route - particularly Mictlan, with its sacred low upkeep blood mages and worthless national troops, leading to an almost total dependence on (mostly blood) summons. Right now it's better to take Order/Misfortune and buy more priests to hunt with - but if Misfortune weakens your blood hunting while Luck strengthens it, the reverse might be true. I think that would be interesting and cool and lead to more tradeoffs in god design - because designing a god shouldn't be easy or simple.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
I also like Cheezeninja's idea of having luck affect blood hunting - after all, blood hunting is highly *random*, and even a skilled mage sometimes *just happens* to find many good blood slaves, or to find no blood slaves.

Blood hunting is not highly random, it is quite consistent for blood 2 mages of blood 1 mages with a SDR. I would hate to cripple blood nations by forcing them to take neutral or positive luck in order to maintain a blood slave supply.

[Jondifool]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

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Originally posted by Chris Byler:
I also like Cheezeninja's idea of having luck affect blood hunting - after all, blood hunting is highly *random*, and even a skilled mage sometimes *just happens* to find many good blood slaves, or to find no blood slaves.

Blood hunting is not highly random, it is quite consistent for blood 2 mages of blood 1 mages with a SDR. I would hate to cripple blood nations by forcing them to take neutral or positive luck in order to maintain a blood slave supply.

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well well is it just me or ...
or is there other here finding it odd that a provins hunted down for its virgins could be somehow related to positive luck.

It would absolute make more sense to let possitive bloodhunting numbers be related to misfortune!

If the provinse is affeckted by luck , i would expect virgins to escape and their fathers to kill the hunter!

Offcause such a modifier would need a lot of balance considering! but it would make sense to open up for more random events then.

And offcause there then should be the option to sacrifice slaves to reduce number of random events, or lessen their effeckt.

Like offering blood to get on good terms with fate and all the natural disasters that a high misfortune number could get then!
And it does sound a little more historical right to me that it should be easyer to find blood slaves when there is a need (from misfortune induced natural disasters) that even the peasants can see.

[ May 16, 2004, 20:34: Message edited by: Jondifool ]

[Schmoe]

There's definitely a disparity between Order and Luck in the endgame, but I don't think people are considering the disparity in the beginning of the game.

On turn 2, a +500 gp event can have a huge impact on how quickly your nation gets started, whereas the benefit of +3 Order is not that great.

On turn 2, your positive luck scale turning a random event from a lost temple to a handful of gems makes a huge impact.

The point is that Luck seems to have a larger impact on the beginning of the game, which in turn can help your nation get started faster, which has a trickle-down effect throughout the rest of the game.

[LintMan]

Some ideas:

- Make the luck scale cost less points at pretender creation than the other scales. If it didn't cost so much, it might be more worthwhile to invest some points in it, and less lucrative to do the Order 3/Misfortune 3/rare events combo that minimizes the badness.

- Make the luck scale have some (fairly small) impact on combat dice rolls. Perhaps +/- 1-2% per scale? Or maybe randomly some of your units will receieve the luck spell effect in combat? Something like this seems like it would fit well with the idea of a lucky domain, and it would make Misfortune less of a no-brainer for the death-domain races/themes

- Make the luck scales affect province unrest. A lucky province is a happy province! A happy province can be taxed slightly higher or blood hunted slightly more easily...

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by LintMan:
Something like this seems like it would fit well with the idea of a lucky domain, and it would make Misfortune less of a no-brainer for the death-domain races/themes

Misfortune is hardly a no-brainer for the population killing themes. Everytime you lose a temple, you lose 200 gold that's extremely difficult to replace.

[tinkthank]

It comes as a surprise to me that a huge empire with many provinces does not have more random events than a 1-province fledgling empire. There should be a chance of random events for each province, not for each nation. If your dominion is strong and you have luck (if your empire is lucky), this will pay off; if not, your misfortune will also spread. It seems to make sense to me.