Balance issue: order-luck, a no brainer?

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Zen:
I've played quite a few games in the Demo and now in the retail with Order 3, Misfortune 3. It has less impact on the game and the bad events don't make as much of a gamebreaking difference than Order/Turmoil Even , Luck 3. And even Turmoil 3, Luck 3.

By far one of the worst combinations right now is Turmoil 3, Luck 3. Even with the greater chance of good events; earthquakes, floods and rebellions sneak in very very early (Turn 10-20) and for the most part target your fotress provinces, leaving them crippled while you get a "Handful of gems" every few turns.

Let's hope you've just had bad luck ( ) because that's not the way it's supposed to work, according to the official numbers... a systemic bug in the highly random luck system would be very hard to find!

[SurvivalistMerc]

I have only played the demo Version. But I have to agree with Zen. Order 3 (but without any misfortune) reduces random events to a very manageable level.

And if I can reduce negative random events while getting income with my scales, I'm all for it.

Whatever the percentage chance of a random event is...let us call it X.

Order 3, misfortune 3 reduce the likelihood by 30% but increase the likelihood that it is negative to 80%. Whether that is good or bad depends on the initial likelihood of an event, which as I understand it is non-public.

If the initial likelihood is 100%....
70% chance of event, 80% negative...56% negative event. Not good.

If the initial likelihood is more like 50%,

20% chance of event, 80% negative or 16%

With even scales, 50% likelihood of event, 50% negative, would be 25%.

However, even if the initial likelihood were 100%, the 56% you would have with order 3, unluck 3 is not noticably worse than the 50% you would have with even scales.

I totally loved my game with order 3, balanced luck scales, though.

SaberCherry, can you tell me how my reasoning is invalid (if it is)?

[Saber Cherry]

SaberCherry, can you tell me how my reasoning is invalid (if it is)?

Hmmm... yeah, that's invalid. The intital event probability based on all neutral scales is assigned a unitless 100, no matter how common events actually are. This does not mean there is a 100% chance of events, it just means that by default, we're calling the frequency of events you get with neutral scales "100" for convenience, because it makes the math work out easily. You could call it "1" or "50", but that would not change the results.

So taking Order-3 lowers your relative event probability to 70, or 70% of the probability compared to neutral scales. If you normally had a 30% chance of an event per turn with neutral scales, Order-3 would reduce the chance to 21%, NOT to 0%. Turmoil-3 would increase it to 39%, not to 60%.

If neutral scales have a relative "100" event frequency, then it also has a relative "50" good event and "50" bad event frequency. Order-3 Unluck-3 has a 100*70%=70 total relative event frequency, with a relative 70*20%=14 good event and 70*80%=56 bad event frequency.

Thus, if every (for example) 40 turns you got 100 events with a neutral scale, 50 of them should be good, and 50 bad. But with an order-3 unluck-3, you should only get 70 total events in the same time, of which 56 are bad and 14 are good.

So you get a tiny (12%) increase in bad events, a huge decrease (62%) in good events (which is OK, because they aren't as potent), and a 21% (or maybe 30%) increase in income. For free. ASSUMING all the published formulas are correct. And the income boost can be even greater if you take a good castle, growth, or productivity.

-Cherry

[SurvivalistMerc]

Productivity increases gold income? I thought it just affected resources?

(Sorry if I'm asking mickey mouse questions...still don't have my game. )

[SurvivalistMerc]

By the way, SaberCherry, thanks for pointing out that it is a "relative" rather than an "absolute" decrease in events.

I will tell you, though...it seemed to be an absolute decrease in events when I played Ctis with order 3 and balanced luck. Almost no random events.

Your formula is probably right and mine probably wrong. I didn't get an increase since I didn't take unluck. I don't really miss those handfuls of gems.

[HJ]

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
Productivity increases gold income? I thought it just affected resources?

(Sorry if I'm asking mickey mouse questions...still don't have my game. )

Yes, 2% per tick.

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
Thus, if every (for example) 40 turns you got 100 events with a neutral scale, 50 of them should be good, and 50 bad. But with an order-3 unluck-3, you should only get 70 total events in the same time, of which 56 are bad and 14 are good.

So you get a tiny (12%) increase in bad events, a huge decrease (62%) in good events (which is OK, because they aren't as potent), and a 21% (or maybe 30%) increase in income. For free. ASSUMING all the published formulas are correct.
-Cherry

By assumming that the chance of events is 100% and order decreases it by 10% you have assumed that orders modifies event likelyhood by 1/10 - do we know this? Given the frequency of events when using low order races and the frequency when using high order races it seems unlikely. My experiance indicates that order +3 does a very good job of dampening down events while turmoil +3 does a good job of increasing them.

On the general question I liked how it worked in Dom I more with Misfortune increasing the chance of events to happen. Its a bit odd saying someone suffers from bad luck if it seldom happens? You suffer more bad luck with turmoil/luck races than order/misfortune races. As people have pointed out good luck can be great but bad luck can ruin you at the start - so less luck is better at present by my reckoning.

cheers

Keir

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:
By assumming that the chance of events is 100% and order decreases it by 10% you have assumed that orders modifies event likelyhood by 1/10 - do we know this?

No, but that's the official word: "Order/turmoil scales increase or decrease the quantity of random events by 10% per step." This is not an exact quote, but I believe it is accurate.

(Edit: It says so in the newby guide, so it must be true! )

I made no assumptions, though, other than that the above paraphrase is true... the neutral-scale event frequency is always 100% if you regard that as your relative base

On the general question I liked how it worked in Dom I more with Misfortune increasing the chance of events to happen.

Yeah, I think that should be the case as well. And, in fact, I suspect it may be the case, and the devs just forgot to mention it=) If so, all my numbers are wrong. But you never know=)

[ November 19, 2003, 21:40: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[DominionsFan]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
Lucky you! Scale effects will be moddable in the upcoming patch.

What????!??!!? The mod tools will be released with the first patch???????

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

quote:

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Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:
By assumming that the chance of events is 100% and order decreases it by 10% you have assumed that orders modifies event likelyhood by 1/10 - do we know this?

No, but that's the official word: "Order/turmoil scales increase or decrease the quantity of random events by 10% per step." This is not an exact quote, but I believe it is accurate.

I made no assumptions, though, other than that the above paraphrase is true... the neutral-scale event frequency is always 100% if you regard that as your relative base

---

That is your assumption Saber - thats the base line is 100% and that is what is modified +-10%. This may "seem" logical but there could be another explanation based around the +-10% being an absolute modifier on your chance that turn (modified so we hear by such things as province numbers etc) of having a random event.

I don't know the answer but your projections do not fit with my Dominions experiance - Dom I could be confusing me.

cheers

Keir