Order +3 Luck -3 : still a no-brainer

[Pocus]

Well for me at least, and with some tests under my belt.

Would like to hear your opinion, is the 2.06 tweak sufficient for you?

[Leadman]

I've had mixed results with it. In the first two games, the lab in my home province was destroyed on turn 2 and one fourth my population died on turn 3. No good events through turn 10. Lost both of those games quickly. I'm on my third game, turn 39, and have lost a temple, 3 provinces have lost population, and have had 4 provinces taken over by large barbarian armies. OTH, I've received lots of zealots, province defense improvements and magic gems.

Leadman

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Leadman:
I've had mixed results with it.

Same here, but on the whole the advantages still outweight the disadvantages by a good margin.

OTOH Luck+3 without Order is still a good recipe for catastrophic outcomes. Plagues events that kill 50+% of your capital's pop shouldn't occur with Luck+3. And even then, they should be restricted to dominions of Death. It's particularly disheartening to see your capital shrink from 30k to 14k in turn 10 with Luck+3 and Growth+1 - it just happened to me. In MP that would be a real gamebreaker.

[ January 24, 2004, 15:39: Message edited by: Nagot Gick Fel ]

[Teraswaerto]

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:

OTOH Luck+3 without Order is still a good recipe for catastrophic outcomes. Plagues events that kill 50+% of your capital's pop shouldn't occur with Luck+3. And even then, they should be restricted to dominions of Death.

Death scale hardly needs to be made less desirable. Limited to misfortune would be far better.

[Pocus]

on the other hand I tried a order 0 luck +3. I must have some chance, because contrary to Leadman, I didnt get any bad events. On the other hand I received one time 200 gp and perhaps 6 time some gems (in 30 turns, and with 10 provinces).

Dont seem to warrant the cost, by far. I mean getting something like 30 to 40 gems spread on 6 fields is nice, but is not sufficient.

[ January 24, 2004, 16:10: Message edited by: Pocus ]

[HJ]

Well, in my current game I had 4 knight attacks and 2 barbarian attacks in the first 25 turns, so I wouldn't know....

[Jasper]

I'm not sure yet, but I'm leaning towards Order 3 + Misfortune 2, or at least Misfortune 1. The power of a given factions heroes influences this as well.

Anyway, I defintely agree that Order/Turmoil is too powerfull of an effect. I'm not sure what to think about Luck/Misfortune, as it's possible they would be ok if one didn't always take O+3.

Of course, as long as Order effects event frequency, Misfortune will always go with Order, and Luck with Turmoil...

[Teraswaerto]

In one game with luck 3 I got 1500 gold, 600 (or was it 500, not sure) gold, and a Robe of the Magi all within the first 20 turns. If only it had been MP...

[ January 24, 2004, 18:18: Message edited by: Teraswaerto ]

[Pocus]

in all my tests I never had more than 200 gp from luck, and generally I only got handful of gems. So the relative un-attractivness of the scale.

[PvK]

It's very difficult to evaluate fairly without knowning the actual numbers. Anecdotal evidence only goes so far to objectively appraise luck. Someone can have a couple of very unlucky games with Luck +3, and decide Luck is worthless, or the other extremes.

This can also be greatly slanted in cases where players cop out and "dump" a game early because things didn't seem to be going well, start a new one and just get annoyed and pretend it didn't happen. That playstyle is incompatible with (doesn't like / is incompatible with) the whole Luck/Event mechanic and I'd say should probably be campaigning for a game setting that removes all major disasters from the game, instead.

A couple of people have mentioned losing entire games due to disastrous events within the first ten turns while taking Order +3 with Luck -3, so if that turns out to be a relatively high chance, then it may be priced OK overall. On the other hand, I wonder if they lost because they gave up, or did they play as hard as they could to the game's end and still lost, and was it then because they were playing against multiple AI at Impossible, etc.?

All in all, it sounds like the really savage events (i.e. population down in home province by greater than 10%) might be best if they were made more rare than they are. Perhaps all population death events should have a maximum % and a maximum number of people, the lower effect being taken, and the max percent never greater than 10%. Losing 25% population even to catastrophic floods is awfully high.

Personally, I've played two games to unsuccessful conclusion, and two games out to turn 40- and 80- something, and about six short test games, all with either average or positive Luck, and my personal results have seemed fine to me, except for the one game (with Order zero and Luck zero) where I did lose 25% population and my home lab, but neither event was really a major contribution to my loss in the whole game. I don't recall any particularly important bad luck events in any of the other games, though the population losses do seem to outweigh the minor bonuses of most events, except when I played Mictlan with Luck +3. In that case, I've had no major bad luck (there have been population blitzes, but they've fallen on cruddy provinces with very low population), and the good luck has had three very important positive effects for my struggling nation (two unique-awesome-free national heroes, and a Soul Contract that has become the backbone of my military, without which I might've been wiped out by now).

Still, from a logic point of view, I think the argument is still compelling that:

1) if there are events which can permanently mess up your most important provinces, and

2) if they still occur with some frequency, and

3) if Order gives gold, resources, reduces unrest and reduces the chance of events, then

4) Order seems like it's likely a good idea.

However I can't attest at all to point 2) myself, and I really haven't cared enough to investigate point 3), since I'm still happily playing single-player without a thought to trying to "game the scales system" and having a bLast, not noticing any particular problems. So, I'm not really qualified to do much more than offer what I've seen, and some ideas.

PvK