Luck/Misfortune Nerf.

[alexti]

Edi said:
Barbarian horde or Vampire Counts on the second, third or fourth turn is a game breaker. Bogus in the home province essentially anytime in the first 20 turns likewise.

I'm not sure that it's that catastrophic. In SP game it's not a big deal. In MP game it's tough, but I've recently got 4 bad events in a row (turns 3 to 6) that brought unrest in my capital above 100 (and destroyed my income as well, of course). Then I got involved into war with 2 nations at the same time. To top it I've started with a wrong plan and wrong pretender. The key point of the game was my mistake in scripting when sieging one opponents castle. Not sure what would happen if I didn't make mistakes myself, but I wasn't clearly out of the game after the bad start. So I don't think that any kind of bad events necessarily mean that you're out of the game.

[Micah]

Given that scenario I have to question either the quality of your opponents or the quality of the respective nations...I don't care how good you are, no one should be able to take 2 opponents on at once after cripplingly bad events, especially with a self-inflicted poor strategy.

[HoneyBadger]

I just started playing a game with Abyssia, and I was going to start with 0 Luck, and I realized that I couldn't safely start the game with less than 1 luck without risking a major disaster-the last game I played my Prophet was cursed in turn 7 AS I was in the process of Prophetizing him, and no misfortune, but I still don't think the witch's curse is a catastrophic event, unless she nails your SC Pretender, which would be rare.

Anyway, any time a relatively experienced, didn't-just-buy-the-game-yesterday, player can't validly decide to choose a given scale of 0 as part of a strategy, it means something is unbalanced. At this point, I would never, ever take any level of misfortune.

Scales, by their very definition, are tools of balance.

[HoneyBadger]

Ok, luck 1, turn 2, Abyssia: plague strikes, cutting my pop by 1/5 and costing me 200 gold.

[PDF]

HoneyBadger said:
Ok, luck 1, turn 2, Abyssia: plague strikes, cutting my pop by 1/5 and costing me 200 gold.

What's broken is that now Luck doesn't seem to prevent major disastrous events - you just have less chance of getting them...
I don't think Curse event has much importance anyway (even on a Prophet or Pretender), but plagues, earthquakes and so on have.

[Micah]

Curse on an SC pretender early seems like a major setback, as he'll rack up afflictions from doing his thing...I don't see the problem with a cursed prophet though, I tend to keep mine in the back happily smiting and blessing things, with no serious chance of injury, and thus no chance of an affliction.

[HoneyBadger]

Yeah, even the 1/5th pop event, if it only happens once, not every turn or so (which does happen), wouldn't be a big deal. And I do consider a cursed Prophet to be just pure bad luck and not the scales at fault. The point is that major catastrophies do happen and Luck doesn't seem to help you.

[Baalz]

Well, I think the issue is not so much with the "dude, that sucks!" events such as a cursed pretender, temple or lab burning down, or several turns of unrest in your capitol. Its more with the things that there is no way to prevent, no way to mitigate, and pretty much make it impossible to come back from. Its just a random roll of the die and you're out of the game regardless of anything you could have possibly done even if you knew it was coming. Strong indy's attacking (Bogus!), and big population killing events are about the only things I can think of that fit that category for me. Everything else fits more into the flavor category- sure it may make the difference in a very competitive game but that's always gonna be the case if you have any radom events at all.

On the luck side of the scale, I don't really see the same issue. There are no events that if you get them, basically ensure you a victory. It's not even close to the impact that one of the catostrophic events will have early in the game- Game Over Dude!

[alexti]

Micah said:
Given that scenario I have to question either the quality of your opponents or the quality of the respective nations...I don't care how good you are, no one should be able to take 2 opponents on at once after cripplingly bad events, especially with a self-inflicted poor strategy.

I think you're making wrong conclusions. Opponents were pretty good. My strategy was quite decent too. It was simply wrong - I expected to encounter uber-bless, but neither of my opponents didn't play it, so I ended up with relatively useless pretender and bunch of spells researched that weren't useful in particular situation. Another important point is that opposition doesn't generally consider destroying you as their own purpose. They have to be concerned with other nations getting stronger. Skirmishes in the early game is one thing, but a major war is a risky undertaking: if you can't win in fast, you're likely to end up in a poor position very soon. So as long as you're able to inflict (or at least convince them that you can inflict) serious damage on the opponents they will typically be satisfied by minor successes. After all they're following their grand plan and it's unlikely that they've built their strategy around you (their neighbour) having unlucky start.

[HoneyBadger]

Luck 1, year 2, Abyssia, lab destroyed. Because of an early luck event, I have no income coming in, and because of the strategy I'm playing, no realistic ability to generate income, and 2500g worth of mages are essentially worthless for X amount of turns.