EA Pangaea strategy

[Endoperez]

It's really hard to tell what's going on with luck on big games. The maximum of 3 events probably isn't hard-coded any more, but I have no idea how Luck scales.

I think I'll have to do a custom map for testing. Some ~100 province map with no/few seas, remove terrain and small/large tags, set two nations to start with 25 provinces, a temple in all of those to spread dominion and PD of 21 in all to lessen the effect of invasion events and perhaps a mapmove 10 flying supercombatant for both sides to get conquered provinces back in few turns.

[Valandil]

Its pretty silly to compare turmoil/luck with order, on the assumptio nthat gift of natures bounty will be up. I mean, that isn't even going to be my first reseach priority. Actually, I'm probably not even going to cast it.

Compare Pangaea, Ord3, 1/3 map, Gift of Nature's Bounty, with
Ermor, Turmoil 3 Luck 3, 1/3 map, Arcane Nexus.
Its just not reasonable to include 9th level globals as part of the scale- how many games have you actually got and kept the gift up in? Maybe... 10%? 5%?

If Endoperez does that test, we will have pretty conclusive statistics, until then, it seems to me as though the two scale sets are fairly balanced, and in light of Pangaea's Maenads I would have to conclude that Turmoil/Luck is the superior choice.

Personally, I prefer it anyways- always liked gems more than money, as you can see below.

[Lingchih]

Valandil said:
Its pretty silly to compare turmoil/luck with order, on the assumptio nthat gift of natures bounty will be up. I mean, that isn't even going to be my first reseach priority. Actually, I'm probably not even going to cast it.

Compare Pangaea, Ord3, 1/3 map, Gift of Nature's Bounty, with
Ermor, Turmoil 3 Luck 3, 1/3 map, Arcane Nexus.
Its just not reasonable to include 9th level globals as part of the scale- how many games have you actually got and kept the gift up in? Maybe... 10%? 5%?

If Endoperez does that test, we will have pretty conclusive statistics, until then, it seems to me as though the two scale sets are fairly balanced, and in light of Pangaea's Maenads I would have to conclude that Turmoil/Luck is the superior choice.

Personally, I prefer it anyways- always liked gems more than money, as you can see below.

Holy Cows Udders Batman! Look at those numbers! Can I hire you for training?

[Renojustin]

Valandil said:
Its pretty silly to compare turmoil/luck with order, on the assumptio nthat gift of natures bounty will be up. I mean, that isn't even going to be my first reseach priority. Actually, I'm probably not even going to cast it.

Compare Pangaea, Ord3, 1/3 map, Gift of Nature's Bounty, with
Ermor, Turmoil 3 Luck 3, 1/3 map, Arcane Nexus.
Its just not reasonable to include 9th level globals as part of the scale- how many games have you actually got and kept the gift up in? Maybe... 10%? 5%?

If Endoperez does that test, we will have pretty conclusive statistics, until then, it seems to me as though the two scale sets are fairly balanced, and in light of Pangaea's Maenads I would have to conclude that Turmoil/Luck is the superior choice.

Personally, I prefer it anyways- always liked gems more than money, as you can see below.

Well, gold vs gems. How many gems do you really need to cast the best spells with your Pan battlemages? (which you can afford with Order 3) +40 or 50 a turn is all you really need in your appropriate areas, and you can hire Pans, summon Faerie Courts, and such till the rams come home with and equip them with as much materia as they need to fire off spells for a good long while.

Then again, how much gold do you need? Well, for starters you can jack all your PD to 50+ with no sweat with a turn or two of Bounty. Indies never take over on random events again, apart from the bonus you get against players. It's permanent and costs no upkeep. It's worth about 5 castles a turn. Ok, Arcane Nexus is cool too.

[vfb]

Endoperez said:
It's really hard to tell what's going on with luck on big games. The maximum of 3 events probably isn't hard-coded any more, but I have no idea how Luck scales.

I think I'll have to do a custom map for testing. Some ~100 province map with no/few seas, remove terrain and small/large tags, set two nations to start with 25 provinces, a temple in all of those to spread dominion and PD of 21 in all to lessen the effect of invasion events and perhaps a mapmove 10 flying supercombatant for both sides to get conquered provinces back in few turns.

That's pretty much what I did in the attachment above to get the six-lucky-event turn, Endo: level zero indies with a dom10 Caelum, dom 10 Helheim, both Luck-3 Turmoil-3 on a big map. I didn't bother taking back lost provinces, and ran it for about 150 turns.

[kasnavada]

I just ran another test using the following methodology :
- 9 starting provinces,
- pass your turn until the beginning of year 4.

Results are around what endoperez found. Base income was 1050 to 967 (down to 750 at turn 11...).
Results were :
- 34000 for order, and about 210 gems (mostly nature except 12 of them),
- 25000 gold for turmoil / nature, about 330 gems (270 nature), 2 heroes.

The difference in gold comes from :
- an indy event that made independant a 200 gold farmland around turn 11 (about 4600 gold lost, it may have been a bit later),
- random militia and flagellant costing money (final upkeep was 250), I'm supposing an "average" upkeep of 100 more than order, that amounts for 3600 gold.

Total amounts are (order / turmoil / luck) :
- 35000 / 33000 gold,
- 210 / 330 gems,
- 0 / 2 heroes,
- 301 / about 100 maenad generated by the lord of the wild.
- 0 / 1 magic item.

In fact I went against an opponent in easy and my military forces were bigger than theirs in the turmoil setting...

I doubt that other tests will prove otherwise, since the time span pretty much even things out, but feel free to speak about it in a "Effect of luck on pangaea" thread, since it affects all ages, and I think it deserve its own thread. However, I think we can safely conclude that order isn't the best choice, it's just a another way to play that isn't better or worse.

[Endoperez]

As I said, the real test is putting Order 3 expansion against Luck 3/Turmoil 3 expansion, and comparing similar scales at that.

Lady of Love, Turmoil 3 Sloth 3 Heat 1 Growth 3 Luck 3 Magic 3 against Lady of Love, Order 3 Sloth 3 Heat 1 Growth 2 Misfortune 2 Magic 3, or Growth 1 if you're worried about running out of resources (doesn't affect Early) or to buy something else off, or even to afford dominion 9/10 for increased Awe for your pretender or higher initial paths for minor bless (W4N4 or better) or some Air for her or whatever. Test both, stop expansion on turn 12, and report income and most important events, and perhaps treasury as well. Income and the turn the construction of second castle was started on would probably give better idea about effectiveness than just gold received until turn X, because even if Luck nation gets 3000 gold on turn 12 and that puts him even, he can't recruit 5 Pans on one turn.

[kasnavada]

Actually, the very point of my test was to avoid needless distractions like human playing skills or pure luck. The point is that it is statistics : the less parameters you have, the more precise and meaningful your test becomes. While your test, endoperez, would be more "complete", it takes into account much more variables, that means you will need to use a lot more tests in order to find a few correlations.

The point of my test was to isolate the order parameter and the turmoil/luck ones, disregarding outside influences like playing skills, expansion, luck (that's the reason for 3 years and "large" number of provinces). And also disregarding the 120 pretender extra points, since there is no clear choice of where it would be the most useful, and too many possibilities to include them all. However, in most strategy games (dominions included), those have more influence than whatever edge scales may give you.

I could run a dozen of those tests, to check whether the results change or not, but it's rather boring. Besides, anyone can run them. I'd rather play, and test new strategies that, anyway, will have much more influence over the game than scales have. And, the point I wanted to contradict is proven wrong. There are no "best choice" scales for Pangaea, only different setting for different strategies.