Been said before, but... luck vs misfortune

[Norfleet]

Luck pays off nicely for Ermor, which is probably the only nation that should focus strongly on taking it: With luck as Ermor, I get only good events, pretty much: Lots of gems, gems, and more gems. Okay, well, maybe the militia and flagellants thing is bad, I have enough upkeep problems as it is, but they can generally be killed off by using them as front line cannon fodder.

Only two bad things occurred over the course of 60 turns: A lab burned down, and the plague killed 1/5th or so of my 0 population.

[Demosthenes]

Well I have regularly taken Luck:2 in my games so far. I frequently get a hero in the first 5 turns, and I cant say that the bad events have crippled my empire in any way. But doesn't the game first determine which province is having an event and then check the Luck scale of THAT province in order to choose which event?

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Demosthenes:
But doesn't the game first determine which province is having an event and then check the Luck scale of THAT province in order to choose which event?

AFAIK, yes.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Zurai:
1 plague bad event
1 hurricane bad event

Are Caelum and one of the death nations in your game? Both of these events are also spell effects.

[atul]

Originally posted by Zurai:
3 "adventursome populace" (-20% pop) bad events
...
Nine of the fifteen bad events (60% even) carried huge population loss penalties. Only four of them (26.7%) were what I would call "minor" bad events (witch's curse, -50 gold, -100 gold).

If I remember correctly, one of the devs in some previous thread hinted that the 'population just leaving' -bad event would become common bad event (being normally rare) when your turmoil is 2 or more. Or was it barbarian invasion?

Anyway, what I'm getting at, is that I keep having this feeling about a deeper synergy between luck scale and other scales than meets the eye. That is, with positive other scales luck brings more goodies than with negative other scales. I've had some SP's with a zero-cost pretender and all scales about +2, and local landlords just line up to give me free provincial defenders, mines and fortified cities. All the yummy stuff. But that's nothing sure, just a feeling I've got.

Been thinking trying sometime a nation that prefers heat/cold 3, taking a minimum cost (viable) pretender and maxing the scales. Don't know where to start, though. Caelum with earth3/4 Natajara, maybe?

Originally posted by Demosthenes:

But doesn't the game first determine which province is having an event and then check the Luck scale of THAT province in order to choose which event?

I'd think so also. Makes invading all those order/misfortune nations a very interesting chore if you're with turmoil/luck. In one SP I was playing S&A theme of T'ien Ch'i and invading deep into misfortune-Ermor's territory. Thought I'd be safe with two provinces to retreat, but what do you know. The same turn undead horde forced my army to flee, both retreat provinces suffered a bad luck event. One was barbarian horde, other invading knights. There goes my army...

[Zurai]

Originally posted by atul:
If I remember correctly, one of the devs in some previous thread hinted that the 'population just leaving' -bad event would become common bad event (being normally rare) when your turmoil is 2 or more. Or was it barbarian invasion?

Anyway, what I'm getting at, is that I keep having this feeling about a deeper synergy between luck scale and other scales than meets the eye. That is, with positive other scales luck brings more goodies than with negative other scales.

So in other words, luck costs twice as many creation points as any other scale (at least), but misfortune doesn't give back twice as many.

Luck needs to be stronger *independant* on other scales. It's cool that some events are based on your scales, but it's not cool that good luck vs bad luck is so unbalanced. A positive luck nation should never be put into the position where they're looking at those 40 points and saying "I wish my magic was higher instead of having luck +1". They should be able to point at it and see a tangible benefit. Right now having a small, erratic extra gem income - which is what positive luck has amounted to for me so far - is nowhere even close to being a match for 9 population loss events.

EDIT: To further clarify my point, every other scale has a quantifiable effect that you can count on game after game. Order raises your income 7%, Growth raises supply and income and population growth rate, etc. The only quantifiable for Luck is that you get more events total - but there's no guarantee that the events will be good or bad, and there's no gaurantee whether the events will be major or minor. Obviously the nature of the beast defies *some* quantification, but there should be some kind of definable effect. Maybe luck could influence something else about the nation? Decreased unrest, for instance - people are happy when they feel lucky.

PS. Yes Caelum was in my game, but the hurricane was on a pretty early turn. I'm fairly confident it wasn't a spell from them.

[ February 16, 2004, 02:57: Message edited by: Zurai ]

[Demosthenes]

Personaly I like that "Luck" works just like... hmmmm... could it be .... luck?

There is an implicit sense of chance. Perhaps the one game you are using for reference here is not indicative of all the "Luck" that you might have?