Luck/Misfortune Nerf.

HoneyBadger · #1 January 21st, 2007, 04:29 PM

Gandalf, by "unsatisfying" I mean "artificially imposed". Your method no doubt does work, but it doesn't work in a way that is logical or meaningful. It only works because the program is written in a certain way, not because there's some kind of "Knights of the Order of the Grasping Usury" do you see what I mean?

thejeff · #2 January 21st, 2007, 06:59 PM

When I asked about strategy I wasn't trying to critizise it, just trying to figure out how you got into the situation.

How do you get your income so low? With a high fire gem income, so you've obviously taken provinces. You said another bad event had trashed your capital income, but what about other provinces? (And if that was the plague you mentioned earlier, that's "lose 1/5th population", not "down to 1/5th" right? Bad, but hardly no income?)
Really bad other scales? Turmoil? Sloth?

Without some idea how you got there, I can't see how this is such a problem. Other than maybe AE Ermor/Dreamlands R'lyeh, I've never seen a position where I wouldn't be able to afford a lab in a turn, 2 at most if I had another income loss event.

HoneyBadger · #3 January 21st, 2007, 10:50 PM

Oh yeah, I definitely had trashed scales, and I didn't take it as a criticism. Like I said, it wasn't a "real" game/strategy, just a potential one. Thanks

Wyatt Hebert · #4 January 22nd, 2007, 10:49 AM

Well, as far as the lab burning down in _year_ 2, that's perfectly understandable... it shouldn't be considered a catastrophic loss at any point in the game, really. Given that with Luck 1, you still have ~33% chance of any event being negative and a greater chance of events occurring, this should be expected. Granted, HoneyBadger, you were saying that you were just testing a strategy... but this should still have been foreseen, imo.

One idea to implement your earlier idea would be protection from _catastrophic events in your capital_ for 2*(3+Luck Scale) turns. So, with Luck 0, you would have no catastrophic events for 6 turns... Luck 3 gives you a year, and Misfortune 3 is courting disaster from turn 2.

Otoh, it makes Misfortune 3 worth, imo, much more than a single tick from Misfortune 2, so it would make Order 3/Misfortune 2 a much more attractive choice for scales.

Just a few thoughts I had while reading...

Wyatt

thejeff · #5 January 22nd, 2007, 11:40 AM

Note that he also had trashed scales, so he probably had Turmoil 3, which boosts the chances of any events, and thus of bad ones.

I think, unless this can be shown to be a realistic problem for a viable strategy, the current system is fine. A couple of turns protection from the most catastrophic events in capitals is sufficient.

Everything else may hurt, especially if it comes at a crucial moment in a war, but can be dealt with.

HoneyBadger · #6 January 22nd, 2007, 03:25 PM

It does happen from turn 2 though, even with Luck 0. You can lose your temple, your lab, half your population, your dominion, even your home province, from turn 2, I've had it happen. If you're not taking Misfortune, then bad luck should not have the ability to trash your nation, whether it's on turn 2 or turn 102.

Now, as the game goes longer, the amount of bad luck needed to trash a given nation increases, so bad luck events can also increase, but as it is, it's completely random, and I don't think scales-even scales dealing with luck and misfortune-should work in completely random ways.

You don't take Heat and get Cold 3 in your home province unless someone's casting some really nasty spell at you, when you take Growth, you expect your population to either remain the same or steadily increase without an outside factor, so why should you be getting terribly bad luck at any point in the game when you've got positive luck scales?

LDiCesare · #7 January 22nd, 2007, 07:16 PM

Here's another proposal. I've had a 1st year like this in a MP game, with Luck zero, order three (so few events normally):
Turn 1 game start.
2 nothing special.
3 Curse on capital, unrest increases to 28.
4 1/5th of capital population leaves, loss of 80 gold.
5,6,7 nothing.
8 1/5th of captial pop leaves, loss of 80 gold, curse: unrest to 68.
9 Neighboring province gets bandits for 35 unrest.
10-12 nothing special.
That's a total of 5 bad events in the first year versus zero good events. Four out of five occur in the capital. Individually, they are not that nasty, but put together the drops in gold income are very significant.

Since I have luck 0, I'd expect to get at least some good events to make up for the bad ones. Why not create a measure of luck, like good karma/bad karma that accumulates? If you get bad events in the first turns, you get more chances that the next event will be good, and vice versa. For instance, after 2 bad events in the first turns, your next event cannot be bad if you have luck 0 or more. I know this is less random, but it could be better than a total ban of events in the initial turns (which for me is between 3 and 12 turns).

Also, some event(s?) caused my capital luck scale to become misfortune (one), but I've got no idea which. Before, I was at luck 0, later I got back to 0 as my dominion brought it back up, but a random event increasing misfortune in the first turns can be a killer if you get Bogus because of it.