Please advise: can misfortune change on its own?

[Graeme Dice]

Merry Jolkar said:
I received this email from a player in a game I'm hosting, saying that his home province has a misfortune of -2. Can misfortune change like this, on its own?

Baleful star and the event with the same effect move the luck scale to misfortune 3.

[Merry Jolkar]

Thanks for the (quick!) advice. But, this is turn #3, so I don't think that can be the explanation in this case, can it?

[Graeme Dice]

Merry Jolkar said:
Thanks for the (quick!) advice. But, this is turn #3, so I don't think that can be the explanation in this case, can it?

Of course, if you took turmoil, then events are very common. With neutral luck, half of them are bad. Once the baleful star event happens, you'll get even more events as your luck scale got more extreme.

[Ygorl]

It should go back to normal over time though, right?

[Graeme Dice]

Ygorl said:
It should go back to normal over time though, right?

Yes.

[Dogboy]

What do hosts typically do if, in this case, someone gets a very unlucky break like this early in the game? Just declare a mulligan? Ask people to muscle on through? Any better solution? (Any way host can give gold or something to the player to compensate?)

[Cainehill]

I believe that mulligans are only given on things that are the fault of the map - for instance, several maps can leave land nations on islands, or on peninsulas with only 1 or 2 land neighbors. Those are worth mulligans, as they are totally screwed up things that aren't the result of a player choice.

But on the other paw - events changing dominion, even to Misfortune 3, are generally the result of the player choosing high Misfortune, Luck, or Turmoil. Sucks to be them (sucked to be me, in a number of games ) but it's the result of their pretender choices.

No mulligan, in my opinion. Mulligans / starting over should only be the result of a very screwed up start cause by the map, not by the players.

[Karacan]

Depends. If one player suffers from barbarian hordes (or, even better, those evil knights), a temple and a lab burndown during the first four turns, I'd be all for a mulligan. That game is certainly over for him.

From everything else, even only two of those events, there's a comeback.

I usually take order 2 luck 3 or order 3 luck 2 to prevent these things from happening. No, really, I do.

[The Panther]

In a game I am playing, I took misfortune 3. In the first 15 turns or so, I got 2 knight attacks (one in the capitol) and 2 barbarian revolts. I also got two vengeful witches as well as an earthquake killing 1/4 of my home population and the temple. This was followed by losing 1/3 population in my capitol to flooding. My home province is now down to about half the people it started with.

Bad luck? Yes, very much so. With order 3, this is very extreme. But I am the one who selected misfortune 3. Nobody forced me to do it. So, I live with my actions and fight on. I was not the first eliminated either, as 3 people are already dead in the game.

I certainly am unlikely to win at this point, but I would never dream of asking for a mulligan.

I have another game I took misfortune 3 and didn't have anywhere near this many bad things happen. But I did learn my lesson. I will take misfortune 2 only from now on, for this seems not near as bad.

Luck is a waste of pretender points unless you take a forced turmoil scale like the Pans, or a forced luck like Man Tuatha, or are Ermor. Take order 3 and misfortune 2 most of the time, and that works quite well.

[Cainehill]

Karacan said:
Depends. If one player suffers from barbarian hordes (or, even better, those evil knights), a temple and a lab burndown during the first four turns, I'd be all for a mulligan. That game is certainly over for him.

From everything else, even only two of those events, there's a comeback.

I usually take order 2 luck 3 or order 3 luck 2 to prevent these things from happening. No, really, I do.

Problem is that as the game stands, _any_ amount of luck or misfortune or turmoil is asking for those events. For that matter, arguably someone who didn't take Order 3 and Luck-0 (remember, both luck-1 and misfortune-1 increase likelihood of bad events) has earned those random events you list. In something like 1 of 287 games, they _will_ happen to you. No biggie in SP, as you simply restart.

But the way random events work currently, they will happen. Any amount of Luck/Misfortune/Turmoil is simply begging for them to happen, and yes - I play those scales. I've had the temple burn down, 50% population loss, and my province besieged, all in my capital in the first 5 turns. I didn't like it a bit. But - I took Turmoil and luck. And inside the first 10 turns, I got a magic item, 1500 gold, and "a lot of gems".

I'd still rather see the random events severely tweaked : less catastrophic events for Luck-pretenders in the first 5 turns, and events not capped at 3 per turn, which really benefits Misfortune nations and hurts Luck nations.

But that doesn't seem likely to happen. In the meantime, I really think that mulligans for anything other than map screwups are rewarding players for taking scales that are designed to hurt them sometimes.