Petition to change LUCK\ORDER Scales

[Nerfix]

I don't find magic weak. If you have cheap(or cost effective) mages, you can easily get huge amounts of research points with magic. Jotunheim is a good example of this. Besides, sometimes you would give a kindom for -1 Mr when that buffed up Nataraja invades your lands...

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Catquiet:
Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

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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.

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On the contrary, events happen quite often. The reason luck isn't attractive is that events aren't consistently positive even with strong luck, and the few crippling events (e.g. flood in home province - although I've seen it in the first year, it is crippling anytime; banning it from the first X turns wouldn't help enough) far outweigh the handful of extra gems or free militia.

That, and order is too valuable for its gold boost. Change it to +/-5% gold, +/-5% events, and make some of the worst events misfortune-only, and I think you'd go a long way toward fixing the order/luck problems.

Magic is another issue - as Saber points out, high levels of drain produce proportionally more decrease in research while high levels of magic produce proportionally less increase.

I'd like to see one or more of the following:
* more gems per site in magic (including home sites) - as Saber proposed
* reduced empowerment cost in magic (+/-10% per scale? Empowerment is pretty rare so you need a big effect to be noticeable)
* reduced ritual/forge cost in magic (+/-5% per scale? Ulm Smiths immune to drain for forging, perhaps not for rituals.)

obviously with the opposite effects in drain.

High levels of magic should make you a magical powerhouse, which currently they don't really - the dominant factor is your gem/slave income, which depends mostly on how many provinces you control and what mages you have available to search them. Research plays a part but not that big a part - and high magic levels don't help research that much anyway.

If magic scale influences gem income, it should influence blood hunting as well. Give Abysia somewhere to put all those points. Of course if the cost reduction approach is taken instead, it would already affect blood magic just like other paths.

I see no problem with the current heat/cold, productivity/sloth or growth/death scales. Different nations, themes and strategies have good reasons to take different positions on these scales, which IMO is how it should be. I have seen and played anything from +3 to -3 and consider them all viable for the right strategy. I wish I could say that for turmoil, magic, drain and luck. Any turmoil is likely to hose you, luck isn't worth the points, high magic isn't worth the points and high drain is too crippling except for standard Ulm.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

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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.

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Although I usually agree with you, I don't want to see scale costs changed. 40 points per scale, for all scales, at all levels, is one of the few simple and easy to understand mechanics in Dom II, and I don't want to see it go away.

I'd rather see the scale effects become nOnlinear (if they have to) than the costs.

What would you say to +1/+2/+4 rp for magic, and -1/-1/-2 for drain? (keeping in mind that the MR effects happen at +/-2).

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?

They shouldn't predictably do so (in my opinion). Instead they should unpredictably do so.

I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with the event system - but really bad events should be much more rare in luck scales, or not be allowed at all. Currently turmoil/luck is not viable, and order/unluck is too good, primarily because luck doesn't provide enough protection from game-losing events, and good events don't provide enough benefit to offset the very bad events.

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

Hmm, that could be interesting. But I think having it affect both sides indiscriminately might largely negate the effect (at least, if you want to make it something that adds to the benefits of luck and the pains of unluck).

Also, I wouldn't call Machaka a light-unit nation. I make extensive use of spider knights and black hunters, both of which are heavy units that I would hate to see get extra afflictions. (Nature-9 is pretty awesome for black hunters...)

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
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.

Ack, it's not!? No wonder luck seems worse to me than it should be, and misfortune better! This was a very thematic effect in Dom 1, and certainly wasn't overpowered.

Returning it would be a definite improvement, with IMHO no chance of unbalancing turmoil/luck. Order 3 gives 13/7 the income of Turmoil 3 -- a nearly insurmountable difference! Even were Order/Turmoil changed to 5% income change per level this would IMHO still not be a problem.

[SurvivalistMerc]

I'm going to have to disagree slightly with respect to magic. It gives decreased percentage returns and increased percentage losses with scales.

But please remember that the cost/reward for taking the scale is linear (as pointed out by someone else here). And imagine a magic-3 Ctis. With shamen doing the research. These are sacred units and have less overall cost per research point than a sage imo. Plus, they seem to have more battle utility than a sage.

To give a unit like this, with around 4 rp or so, 3 extra rp is a 75% boost overall. Not bad. I'm going to stick with those who want the drain scale left alone.

With regard to luck, what would folks say to not only good and bad random events but also neutral ones that have good and bad elements? Your luck scale could turn some bad or good events into "neutral" ones depending on what scales you took. (I see the militia as "neutral" at best. But they do make good cannon fodder and give me an excuse to make that summer sword.)

I'll acknowledge that I'm still a total newb, so my assessment of value is very preliminary here.

[mr.white]

I think the main issue here is that the event system is broken. That skews the whole view of order since it has the additional benefit of disaster-protection, which you can't get any other way. I'm not so sure that it's too good without that aspect.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:

quote:

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Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
Having them modify the chances of units gaining afflictions in lucky/unluck provinces, though... that would be interesting too.

Hmm, that could be interesting. But I think having it affect both sides indiscriminately might largely negate the effect

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I really like this idea, and it sure hasn't to work indiscriminately. A positive luck scale should lower your chances to get afflictions only if you're fighting in your own dominion (just like you don't benefit from your neighbor's luck wrt events). It could even go further: luck could increase the chances for the enemy to get afflictions if he's fighting in your dominion.

On the same vein, I remember someone suggested a lucky dominion should give a bit of luck to your units, as long as they remain in your dominion - like the Luck spell, but only 5%/tick instead of 50%. I thought that was a cute idea.

Also, I wouldn't call Machaka a light-unit nation. I make extensive use of spider knights and black hunters

I could do without the spiders, I couldn't without the hoplites.