Petition to change LUCK\ORDER Scales

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
I don't like the ideas of the luck scale causing increased gold income, or weakening Order's gold boost. Instead, I'd like to see very high-level magic (6-10) made cheaper on pretenders to make spending points there more tempting, or graduated costs on scales (going from 0 to +3 order costing 30, 40, then 50) so that +-3 was not always the best choice.

These changes still leave order the dominant scale... Addressing the strength of order relative to the other scales is very much the issue. How would you suggest making the other scales more viable relative to order?

Graduating the costs of scales is attractive to me however, and 30/40/50 seems reasonable.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Jasper:
How would you suggest making the other scales more viable relative to order?

I think Production is fine and Heat/Cold is fine (though morale effects would be nice). Growth is underpowered, and would be better (and more thematic) if it offered more growth, not more gold. Or maybe cheaper cavalry, since grass and horses flourish...=) No, seriously.

I see magic as weak, too. Drain is crippling, since it gives increasing detriments, while magic gives decreasing returns...

So, if you use magic-2 units as researchers, going from drain-3 to magic-3 is like this:

Scale.......Research......Design Points
-3..................1.......................+40
-2..................2.......................+40
-1..................3.......................+40
+0.................4.......................0
+1.................5.......................-40
+2.................6.......................-40
+3.................7.......................-40

...not very balanced. The move from -3 to -2 costs 40 points, but is WAY more valuable than the move from +2 to +3 which is almost worthless even with weak researchers. Now if Magic/Drain increased or decreased gem output from magic sites... yes. THAT would make it a vital scale. 10% per tick would work (and of course gem output would have to be randomized, so that a site giving 3 Earth gems, in Drain-3, would have three 70% chances of giving an earth gem each turn, averaging 2.1 gems per turn).

Alternately (or in addition), the cost could be rescaled, like this:

Scale.......Research......Design Points
-3..................1.......................+55
-2..................2.......................+50
-1..................3.......................+45
+0.................4.......................0
+1.................5.......................-45
+2.................6.......................-40
+3.................7.......................-35

Thus, the cost of Magic-3 would stay 120, but the benefit of Drain-3 would move to 150... and the previously less-tempting ends of the scale would both look more attractive.

As for making order less prone to extremes, rescaling the cost or reducing the event interference might help. +-1 Order causing -+5% event probability rather than +-10% might help, and partially decouple the luck/order link.

-Cherry

[Catquiet]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

I don't like the ideas of the luck scale causing increased gold income, or weakening Order's gold boost.

At the moment, even with common random events, events don't happen often enough to make + Luck worthwhile. If they increased the frequency of random events or made good events a whole lot better, Dominions II would depend too much on chance. That would take away from the strategy part of the game.

The +/- gold from the LUCK scale would represent all the tiny events that affect the income of your peasants but aren't quite newsworthy. One farmer's plow horse goes lame, moths get into a silk merchant's warehouse, ect. It all adds up.

Currently ORDER has the most important scale effect in the game. Positive ORDER also reduces the good and bad effects of LUCK. Together these things make LUCK very unattractive, it needs a +/- gold bonus to make it viable.

Perhaps if Luck when adjusted at all (The Balance of All things) Event occurance increased.

So;

Luck +3 +15% Increase in Events +30 To Good Luck
Luck +2 +10% Increase in Events +20 To Good Luck
Luck +1 +5% Increase in Events +10 To Good Luck
Balance 0 - Even Luck
Luck -1 +5 Increase in Events +10 To Bad Luck
Luck -2 +10 Increase in Events +20 to Bad Luck
Luck -3 +15 Increase to Events +30 to Bad Luck


Thus if you took the Order +3, Misfortune -3 Option you would be negating half of what Order does, and be penalized by the Bad Luck. Or if you I could never see anyone take Turmoil 3, Misfortune 3 though if it was changed to this. Though maybe that is good.

I do think Magic is a weak scale as well. Perhaps there could be another added adjustment besides Magic Resistance and Research.

[Catquiet]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

I see magic as weak, too. Drain is crippling, since it gives increasing detriments, while magic gives decreasing returns...

-Cherry [/QB]

Would you be happier if Magic gave a straight %20 percent bonus to the research pool per tick?

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Catquiet:
Would you be happier if Magic gave a straight %20 percent bonus to the research pool per tick?

Possibly. I'd have to think about it for a while. The way it works now is more interesting, with weak mages affected more than strong mages, and the pretender rarely affected much at all... really, I think I'd prefer for the research effects to stay the same, and rebalancing of scales done more at the scale-cost level than scale-effect level. Though magic/drain affecting gem output seems logical and interesting to me.

Extra luck increasing income would be logical to help fix the system, by making +Luck/+Order suddenly a viable choice... but it makes no sense conceptually to me. Why should luck and unluck predicatably affect your income? Having them modify the chances of units gaining afflictions in lucky/unluck provinces, though... that would be interesting too. Right now the affliction chance for a hit is this: (Damage/HP). So a 20 HP unit taking 5 damage has a 25% chance of gaining an affliction. Something like (Damage*(10-Luck)/(10*HP)) would change that, so that the same situation in a -3 Luck province would give (5*(10+3)/(10*20))=32.5%, and a +3 Luck province would give a (5*(10-3)/(10*20))=17.5% of gaining an affliction.

Unluck would be a good scale for light-unit Machaka and BK Tien Chi, while Luck would be better for Ulm, Abysia, and Ermor... and everyone would be afraid to invade Unluck nations

-Cherry

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Zen:
Perhaps if Luck when adjusted at all (The Balance of All things) Event occurance increased.

That was the case at one time in Doms I, but I've been unable to confirm it for Doms II.