Luck/Misfortune Nerf.

[HoneyBadger]

Yes, thank you Micah.

3 years is only 36 turns, which-considering the amount of strategic choices you can make-might be a lot for some people or nothing at all for others.

3 years is an arbitrary number, BUT here's the thing, it's also the average number of years you can expect to wait for your Pretender, if your Pretender is imprisoned, so it's a Dev-chosen length of time set as an outer limit on when your game should be rolling by.

3 years thus is a strategic byline coded into the game as a soft but strong number already.

And I'm definitely not saying "Let's not have any bad events happen at all in the first three years!".

I'm not suggesting that they not happen if you decide to choose Misfortune scales.

I'm not suggesting that they not happen if you choose to have Luck scales.

I'm just saying that if you have Luck +0-+3, you shouldn't have to worry about a major, game-altering, Nation-imploding bad luck event, like losing your temple or lab (in certain circumstances, losing your temple is just as bad or even worse than losing your lab-playing Mictlan for instance with low Dom and an imprisoned Pretender) or your population being halved or having 25 vampire counts attack your province, or having your Dominion mirror-reversed to black candles in your home province, before turn 37.

On turn 37 I don't care if the Hunter of Heroes eats your castle and then sits on your face, that's tough luck but by that time your nation has a decent chance to recover, regardless of what kind of strategy you happen to follow.

[HoneyBadger]

Oh and another small but nice side-effect of this would be to make another area of the game time-related, than just sticking me with a bunch of old magic-using geezers who end up forgetting their spells and drooling on themselves half the time anyway.

If time causes, and is related to, bad things happening, it should also cause, and be related to, good things. I'm all in favor of that.

(I'm also in favor of the philosophy that-if you have Nations who are handicapped over time because of the age of their units, you should also have Nations with units who grow stronger over time, as that's only logical and makes for balance, but that's another thread.)

[Gandalf Parker]

HoneyBadger said:
3 years is only 36 turns, which-considering the amount of strategic choices you can make-might be a lot for some people or nothing at all for others.

36 turns is a long ways into a small map blitz game. That would make taking unluck a no-brainer. We would have new people complaining then because to some thats all that Dominions is.

And I mentioned lab because if you have no mages and you lose your only lab then you will wait for a hero or a merc that has magic in order to build one. With the loss of a temple you just need your prophet.

And Im pretty sure that the most extreme events are already supposed to be limited in the initial turns. Only taking the most extreme scales can make you that unlucky since I think it never quite goes to zero.

[HoneyBadger]

Well then 12 turns for small maps, 24 for medium, 36 for large, etc. No reason we can't suggest Scales be themselves "scaled" to fit situations. Ideally, you could simply select the level of adjustment at the beginning of the game and apply it based on personal choice and circumstances.

[Micah]

If you took misfortune 3 you'd still run the chance of bad events, same as now, the proposed change wasn't for anyone that took actual bad scales, why do people not seem to be reading that?

[HoneyBadger]

I think it has something to do with my poor choice of title. I just like using the word "nerf" is all