Best Province targeting ritual?

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Cohen:
I believe the ghost rider should be a little nerfed, or cost raised ... I know it's a very high research level spell ... but for 5 gems you've a very powerful strenght to annhilate armies and to harrass provinces temple undefended

And a $300 castle permanently eliminates this, and many other nuisances regarding sudden temple burnings. That's $300 well-spent, something I'm reminded of every time I burn down one of your temples.

Originally posted by tinkthank:
This is the second time I have seen you mention something like this.
Who is "everyone" that takes misfortune? Has there been some sort of tacit consensus while I was out getting cigarettes? And if so, why?

Nearly everyone takes misfortune, as a living nation, because it's the easiest source of points you can get after taking Order...which nearly everyone must also do, or they'll be making half the income of anyone who doesn't. While Misfortune-3 maybe be too much of an ouchie, Misfortune-2 is a pretty decent source of points to partially offset the costs of Order, since Order helps to suppress the annoyance of random events in the first place, which makes it anti-synergistic with Luck.

When you consider the huge effect Order has on income, as compared to any other income-affecting scales, and how badly short of Gold you usually are, this tends to rapidly become a no-brainer for nearly all living nations.

Furthermore, the Luck scale is weak, as a number of bad events appear to be classified as good events, such as heavy rains, or the "free" militia.

Obviously, dead nations need not apply, but then, do you really care if a plague wipes out half of your zero population every so often?

[Cohen]

Oks a castle worth to defend the temple, sure.

But what about when you lose an entire army cause someone cast for 25 gems 165 Longdead Horsemen and 5 Wraith mounted commanter unleashing this sudden strike on you?

(I told 25 gems cause this will take out a pretty big army)

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Cohen:
But what about when you lose an entire army cause someone cast for 25 gems 165 Longdead Horsemen and 5 Wraith mounted commanter unleashing this sudden strike on you?

Sudden strike? Your army can't be touched if it's inside of your castle.

If you're in front of an ENEMY castle, you should have expected this! It's not sudden when you expected it to happen and braced for impact.

[SelfishGene]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Nearly everyone takes misfortune, as a living nation, because it's the easiest source of points you can get after taking Order...which nearly everyone must also do, or they'll be making half the income of anyone who doesn't. While Misfortune-3 maybe be too much of an ouchie, Misfortune-2 is a pretty decent source of points to partially offset the costs of Order, since Order helps to suppress the annoyance of random events in the first place, which makes it anti-synergistic with Luck.

Eh dunno, the good luck events are really pretty good. Everyone guffaws at free gems but they can easily lead to site searching paths you wouldn't have been able too, at least easily without hot-footing it on the map. The gold events are unpredictable but quite nice.

I had been making test runs with nations for PBeM games, and i found lots of bad luck completely unacceptable, especially the 'province is attacked by barbarians' sort - and even with 3 Order. Those just really damper you expansion if you have to circle back and recapture them, sometimes 4-5 turns have been lost, not to mention the income during occupation and unrest after recapture. This is especially true for nations weak in the early game that really NEED to expand to gain enough capital momentum to move further on their tree to better casters or summons (hi Mictlan!).

And after being burned by Rain in my Home Province in my first email game, i just don't like the risk.

In fact in one game im taking Luck AND Order. We'll see how that works out.

I believe that bad events are triggered by other scales as well. Even with Luck 2 i would get several especially annoying bad events, because another scale was set to -3. Its like there are thresholds for bad events.

For me the 'freebie' scale is either Sloth or Hot/Cold; well, ill take a peg of cold if i just have to have 40 points, but ill take Sloth 2 or 3 if something has to give, over Misfortune. I may well be wrong if you look at the formulae, but its what seems to work best from my experiences and methods.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by SelfishGene:
And after being burned by Rain in my Home Province in my first email game, i just don't like the risk.

Heavy rains happens just as much, if not more, with Luck. Luck has absolutely no effect on preventing it.

I believe that bad events are triggered by other scales as well. Even with Luck 2 i would get several especially annoying bad events, because another scale was set to -3. Its like there are thresholds for bad events.

This tends to be true for "good" events as well: In order to reap the benefits of Luck, you need good scales in other areas as well, particularly a strong magic scale. This is why Ermor works well with luck: All of their "good" events are channelled towards gems, and the "bad" good events, like heavy rains, plagues, and whatnot, just kill more of your 0 population.

For me the 'freebie' scale is either Sloth or Hot/Cold; well, ill take a peg of cold if i just have to have 40 points, but ill take Sloth 2 or 3 if something has to give, over Misfortune.

A peg of hot or cold generally has only half the effect that the numbers say it will, and, in fact, especially if you're a Heat/Cold-2 nation, like Jot/Machaka, taking an extra peg helps more than it hurts, as you will be at your preferred temperature MORE often than not.

Sloth, of course, greatly cuts into your ability to produce troops. If this isn't a great concern to you, it's definitely worth it: I certainly do it....but it's not enough! You need more points!

Sloth also has a slight income malus, but not a strong one: its primary effect is on resources.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
[QB]Heavy rains happens just as much, if not more, with Luck. Luck has absolutely no effect on preventing it.

This particular claim is utter bull****.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
This particular claim is utter bull****.

You can say that, and go ahead and take Luck 3. Then I'm going to laugh at you when you wasted all those points to have your provinces rained out anyway. Luck-3 will do nothing to stop this.

I hear constantly about this happening to people who take Luck...oddly, it rarely happens to me, and I'm getting the points for Misfortune. I have to conclude that Luck does absolutely nothing to help here.

When you then consider that you must *PAY* for Luck, and that it is antisynergistic with the required Order, you have to wonder if it's worthwhile.