Balance issue: order-luck, a no brainer?

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.

Maybe I'm missing something.

[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.