Thoughts on making "luck" equally attractive

[MaxWilson]

kasnavada said:
That's what usually happen when someone proves some other wrong. They say "your test suck, because of 'insert stupid condition here'". Then they ask others to do the test again.

Do that 40 province test yourself and then I'll start to pay attention, until then my test stands, for lack of a better proof ? or because it's true.

Whoa there, calm down. I'm sorry if my tone was unwarrantedly hostile. Luck is known to not scale with empire size. A test which uses a very small empire is not going to give representative results and doesn't prove anything even in an empirical sense about the game mechanics.

-Max

P.S. I'm not sure if I believe in the 3 event cap, but it seems low to me. I'm pretty sure I've seen up to 4 or 5 events on some turns.

[kasnavada]

Then when do you run that 40 province test ?

Until then it proves that with a low amount of provinces the amount of benefits is about the same. Which means that taking order 3 isn't a "best choice".

EDIT : not that it matters lol, boost luck anyway !

[MaxWilson]

Kasnavada,

You're being silly. I haven't made any positive claims[1] and therefore don't require empirical tests to support them. You're being overly sensitive about criticism.

All the same, I've contemplated running a larger test because so many people have done the smaller one and it would be nice to have data on a more representative sample. It's possible that you may have annoyed me into doing so later on this week.

-Max

Edit: [1] Except that "Luck is known to not scale with empire size." If you're disputing that claim, say so and I'll be required to provide evidence. But I think you already know that that claim is true.

P.S. I agree that your test proves that small empires benefit more from Luck than Order.

[kasnavada]

Well, the exact same can be told about your comments ! Silly and all...

Whatever, believe what you want.

"Luck is known to not scale with empire size."

That's a point I don't know about, actually. So many people speak about a 3 event limit and some speak about 6...

[MaxWilson]

Okay, then in that case I do have to support the claim about luck not scaling. I'll do so later this week.

-Max

[kasnavada]

If you manage to find out that what the max limit of event is I'd be interested to know, and possibly make it bigger. It's rather silly that lucks would gets worse when the places where luck events can occur is made bigger...

[Ironhawk]

kasnavada said:
Then when do you run that 40 province test ?

Because there is no need to run a test? There is a cap to events - be it 3 or 5 or 6... it doesnt matter. Whatever it is, at some point Luck stops scaling as your empire grows. Order never does.

Additionally, as the person challenging convention I think the burden of proof is on you, kasnavada.

[Xietor]

To be civil, I would like to say kas has a point that order is predictable, and many take the scale to get a predictable income.

That said, and with no empirical proof other than having played wayyyyyyyyy too many dominions games for years now, there is a hard cap on the luck events. That is based on experience. So I can offer no piece of code or any scientific
test.

But Kas is also correct in that you can exceed the cap at times, but not consistently. If you capture provinces, you sometimes get events that the other player would have received, resulting in an extra 1 or 2 events depending on how your war is going.

Of course you can get many many "bad" events per turn if your enemy is spamming spells on your provinces. But the lucky events are capped, and the number i believe the cap to be is 4. So on a 300 province map, if you own 50 provinces, 4/50 is not as good as when you owned fewer provinces.

Accepting the cap as a reality, and for the sake of avoiding argument, let us please get the thread back on track. For those who forgot what it is about, read the 1st post.

In particular, any thoughts about adding a luck event where mercenaries show up at your gate?

[DonCorazon]

Ironhawk said:
Whatever it is, at some point Luck stops scaling as your empire grows. Order never does.

One reason I like Luck is the converse of this - that Luck is overly helpful in the early game. So in the first few turns when +22% income may translate into 80/90 extra gold, a luck event can get you 1000gp. Admittedly it is unpredictable. I am in 2 games now with Luck 3 - one I am coming up short in. The other has been amazing. Every turn I have been able to buy everything I can with money left over. I have permanent income raising events, gems, one time gold events etc. And that is in less than 15 turns. It may not equate to the long-term advantage of order in a math analysis, but qualitatively it is leading to rapid expansion that my gut tells me is better than the bonuses I'd be reaping with Order.

[Chris_Byler]

It seems to me that the simplest way to adjust order/luck would be to raise the event per turn cap to an amount that is unlikely to be hit in the competitive stage of any game - say 50 events per nation per turn. The non-scaling of luck/misfortune to large empires is no longer a problem; large lucky empires could potentially get several free buildings a turn along with a few dozen free units, substantial extra gem income etc. Large unlucky empires, on the other hand... well, let's just say it's a good thing you have that extra gold from order.

Replacing the militia event with X gold worth of some national troop (hopefully a reasonably decent one) would be a nice change, too. I'd much rather have 20 free huskarls, city guards, marverni nobles, or hastatii than 40 militia - and that's just the mundane troops.

Even a decent indy troop would be better than militia.