Petition to change LUCK\ORDER Scales

[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.

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

quote:

---

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.

---

I is not in Dom II, but I'm starting to believe it should be. There is a risk of a turmoil/luck default with this setting, but the use for luck-0 is more obvious and order/misfortune-3 is less viable.

[Keir Maxwell]

I consider Militia turning up to fight for me to be a bad thing. Not only do the useless blighters make me pay for them but sometimes they turn up where my army is blowing its carefully calculated supply and causing horrible trouble. Like when I moved moved my starving veterans into a rear province to recover and the the militia turn up, eat the food, pocket your gold, and laugh at the poor diseased veterans. ^%@#!

In Dom1 I could use Militia for patroling and I still didn't like them. I sure do dislike them now. How about that event just improves the provinces defense rating significantly. That might even be useful sometimes and at least it will never be bad.

Sometimes you do get incredibly good events. Like the time I got 1000gps on the first turn with my crazy Niefelheim Ice Age race - would you like to wear that in MP? Then there was the time I got Chainmail of Deflection on the first turn and stuck it on the Prince of Death. So sometimes luck can be very good - lets not forget this in our hurry to rebalence. If you get one bandit camp every year playing luck/turmoil I wouldn't complain. Now that earthquake on the first turn I got the other day would have hurt if it had been MP.

cheers

Keir

[ November 23, 2003, 08:51: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]