Turmoil 3 / Luck 3?

[Gandalf Parker]

Another difficulty with finding the "max number of random events" is that most of them are tied in to certain scales and other factors. I think that people tend to form rock-hard opinions about the number of events but they tend to be the same people who play on the same types of game on the same size of map.

Not only would you need to randomly get a high number of events, but a high number of events that happen to match your provinces. Late game, where someone owns many provinces, on a really large map, and is getting many variable dominions pushing on them from all sides, would be the best bet to push the limit. Few people tend to play games where that can occur.

Gandalf Parker

[Hoplosternum]

I don’t think there is an event CAP. I am not sure there is even a soft cap where it gets difficult to get more after 3. If your empire is large and expanding unless you are doing a dom kill strategy you often have large areas not under your dominion or not heavily. So whether you have picked Luck or Order you are not actually benefiting from your scales everywhere all the time.

But there are many problems with Luck from a raw power rather than interest/theme point of view.

I probably fall in to Gandalf’s play the same size maps with similar scales trap but I have noticed something about Luck. It tends to give in most cases what you have.

When I was testing Jomon builds I often tried Production & Luck. The former being something I seldom play with even with resource hungry powers, whether I am playing SP or MP. I got lots of Iron mine finds and even more of those province production improvement events (Merchants?). Far more than with any other scales I have played. The net result is having paid a lot for extra production in scales I got even more.

Most of the Heroes, even with Worthy Heroes, give you what you already have. I am not saying that the Heroes are not nice. They are. But when I played Pythium I got a nice mage that was similar to a good Arch Theug. Great, but I could recruit one. Likewise I got a few Master of the Games. A potential Thug but soon eclipsed by Pythium’s national summons of flying, sacred, mage Thugs. Plus some Snake Rider chappie who seems to be marginally better than one of my recruitable err Snake Rider Commanders.

Jomon gets a nice Assassin to go along with the recruitable Assassins and a Red Devil General who appears to just be an extra commander.
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The Giant Powers – Fomoria, Utgard etc. often get decent Giant Commanders. But they can already recruit these. One of the Jotun /Utgard ones gives Air Magic which is very nice but this is the very problem with luck. Far too little is of this nature, something different that can open up new options for you.

Luck would be far better if there were not National Heroes but simply Heroes that you had a better chance of getting.
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Even the gem and gold bonuses seem to fade. Later in the game when you have enough provinces under luck to be having a Gem find and a Gold bonus (100-200 usually) each turn, while nice, is not that big a deal compared to the large boost in income Order gives. Plus there is often a sting in the tail with Gem finds. Sometimes some units are cursed in return. That’s fine if it is a mundane unit but eventually your Pretender or a valuable SC/Thug gets caught.

Even with high luck you still get some bad events and even with minor misfortune you still get some Heroes. I like Luck and do use it. For the same reasons others have posted. Sometimes I want a bit more chaos and fun that it can bring. It really gives too little Chaos and Fun and its opposite just isn’t that bad.

Whether you play SP or MP it is easy to write off a game if you get a bit of killer bad luck early. This isn’t real life; you can just give up and restart. Once you get past the early game luck just doesn’t do enough and misfortune hurts too little. There is nothing wrong with having a choice that offers you a different if less powered nation. We can all play nations and produce too many of the weaker units by choice or by mistake and it doesn’t necessarily doom us. But sadly luck is a frustratingly weak pick it doesn’t seem to be powerful or even interesting enough. Yet a few extra good and interesting events and some extra bad ones could make this scale more of a real choice.

Can events be modded at all?

[Crevan]

IMHO Tum3/Luck3 picks works good only in short game. Small map, quick rush - you can use gem/cash bonuses, mighty special heroes and other stuff. Long play - I`d better summon more powerful hero (e.g. Kings, undeads, sleepers) and receive Order bonuses (income, res)

[Adept]

I quite like it, but then I don't really minimax my games. I experiment and set challenges for myself, even when playing against other humans.

Interestingly, in our current 6 player multiplay (with 6 AI's for spice) the only person to go for high production & order scales is the guy who is newest to the game. Going for maximum army output. The old hands like me are messing about with complex magical plans instead.

[Zeldor]

Hoplosterum:

That topic was here many many times. There are max 3 events you can get + spells that look like event + conquering enemy provs, where events happened. If that combo was good people would take it often in MP. But it just isn't worth it.

[Crevan]

Adept, I usually use high magic boost instead of productivity - and long casting/summoning/enchanting/crafting instead of brutal meat rush. But if I choose Order OR Turmoil- first pick looks more useful
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Zeldor, "...conquering enemy provs, where events happened"- how it works? I can "capture" enemy event and bonus, or just message about it?

[archaeolept]

3 hard cap. Other events are either rituals, or having conquered someone else's province and stolen their event. ie, as Zeldor said.

[Jazzepi]

Originally Posted by Zeldor

Hoplosterum:

That topic was here many many times. There are max 3 events you can get + spells that look like event + conquering enemy provs, where events happened. If that combo was good people would take it often in MP. But it just isn't worth it.

I agree.

Every time I take turmoil 3 / luck 3, it's just complete garbage compared to Order 3 / Misfortune 2.

Misfortune is hilarious, actually, it's so /good/ for you. Misfortune's bad events generally are either "something terrible happens to a province" like everyone gets eaten, or "some neutrals attack your province". Mid-> late game the second category type of events you can easily remedy with a modicum of PD if your PD is good, otherwise you can just dump 20 into a province and have basic immunity from those events in that province.

The nice part about misfortune in this case is that it increases the number of events that occur. This means that you have a greater chance for neutral events and good events as well.

Jazzepi

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by Jazzepi

I agree.

Every time I take turmoil 3 / luck 3, it's just complete garbage compared to Order 3 / Misfortune 2.

The nice part about misfortune in this case is that it increases the number of events that occur. This means that you have a greater chance for neutral events and good events as well.

I disagree. I think I've seen four non-spell events on a "stable" turn, i.e. I didn't get any provinces, didn't lose any provinces, didn't do anything funny. This is in the "I think" and "if I recall" category, but I still disagree.

It's silly to favour the scale combination that costs more. Luck 2/Turmoil 1 might be (or might not) be competitive against Order 3/Misf 2. Money is so important I wouldn't take Turmoil 2 without also taking money-making scales besides luck.

And finally, while misfortune increases the number of events compared to neutral luck, it skews them towards bad events more than it increases their amount. I'd guess that in average, you get at most as many good events as neutral luck, probably less - and many more bad events, of course. How is that nice?

[Jazzepi]

It's silly to favour the scale combination that costs more. Luck 2/Turmoil 1 might be (or might not) be competitive against Order 3/Misf 2. Money is so important I wouldn't take Turmoil 2 without also taking money-making scales besides luck.

You're missing the point. The decision for me is binary, the reason I'm comparion those two scale choices is because they're the most efficient choices for that slot. Either you take O3/M2 or you take T3/L3. There's absolutely no reason to take something in between, unless you enjoy throwing away points for the anti-synery of Order and Luck, in which case you need to rethink your design because you've reached a point where you're wasting points.

I avoid taking misfortune 3 because it creates the potential for really, really large barbarian events, which you can't easily defend against with PD, and go beyond the normal annoyances, of having to send a middling force to recapture the province.

To explain what I was trying to say about the misfortune actually being a benefit, think about it this way. If misfortune only increased the good/bad of an event, then we wouldn't have this conversation, but since it increases the *amount* of events at the same time, something different is going on.

Because of the fact that /most/ events from misfortune 2, and decent scales, are negligible in effect compared to their luck counterparts (I've yet to run into a -1,000 gold event, and even running O3/M2 in all my games, even with death scales, I've still yet to run into any really bad plague events) you don't really care about the skewing of events towards bad, since you can basically ignore the effect of most bad events.

For example, if you go from 10 events, to 15 events because you have M2 instead of a neutral luck scale, then you have more random events. More chances for you to find arcane labratories, to hang witches from trees and get their gems, etc. etc. While you also increase your chances of getting a bad event out of those 15, most of those events you can simply ignore anyways with a little preparation, so the increase the # of events is actually a benefit.

And let me add one last thing. /Really/ bad events early in your capital, are generally devastating, but they happen so infrequently (mind you out of all of your territories they have to happen in your capital to really ruin you) that you're running a minuscule chance that you might get knocked out of the game. Unlike with Luck, you can easily bow out of the game that your Misfortune has knocked you out of. Whereas with Luck, you need to consistently get good events early. Sure it might pay off over the course of 100 turns. But you don't have 100 turns to sit around and wait for those gold events to build up, and make your income match that of a player who had O3/M2, who unlike you with L3/T3, knows what his income will be, and will have a /huge/ advantage over you patrolling on the first turn, as well.

Jazzepi