EA Pangaea strategy

[vfb]

renojustin said:
....
The primary thing that Luck scales is dependent on is luck. You only have a chance for these events to be good. Luck 3 = 39% more chance that the event will be good. 50% (1.39) = 69.5% chance of a good event. So you have a 30.5% chance of a bad event; nearly 1/3 of your events will be bad.
...

Testing (and experience) gives around 90% good events with Turmoil3-Luck3 scales. I'm pretty sure "event is good +39%" means you get 89% good events.

Also, comparing Order3 with Turmoil3-Luck3 is unfair. That's a difference of 120 design points.

[Renojustin]

You're definitely right, but it has to be compared because those are two of the main ways to set up your EA Pangaea. Figure what you'd do with those points and for what reason, and plug it into the equasion [+53% gold VS Maenads + 1 more good event per turn + (?)]. I have to admit that Maenads look a lot better after they've been tested as having no upkeep. It's probably the same for LA R'yleh too.

I don't think that 90% good events is accurate. I get a heck of a lot more bad events than 1 in 10 with Luck 3.

[vfb]

I'm counting events where all the provinces are Turmoil3-Luck3. If you're counting total events in a real game, you'll get different numbers, depending on how fast your dominion and scales spread. Let me rephrase that ... you'll get more accurate numbers.

Later in the game your scales should have stabilized, but if you invade enemy dominion, then you'll get bad events in those provinces while waiting for your scales to catch up.

[Lingchih]

Luck 3, even with Turmoil, is temperamental. I always play with luck for Pan, but rarely get the good gold events. Still, the 3000 gold event is nice when it comes along.

[Endoperez]

It's really hard to tell what's going on with luck on big games. The maximum of 3 events probably isn't hard-coded any more, but I have no idea how Luck scales.

I think I'll have to do a custom map for testing. Some ~100 province map with no/few seas, remove terrain and small/large tags, set two nations to start with 25 provinces, a temple in all of those to spread dominion and PD of 21 in all to lessen the effect of invasion events and perhaps a mapmove 10 flying supercombatant for both sides to get conquered provinces back in few turns.

[Valandil]

Its pretty silly to compare turmoil/luck with order, on the assumptio nthat gift of natures bounty will be up. I mean, that isn't even going to be my first reseach priority. Actually, I'm probably not even going to cast it.

Compare Pangaea, Ord3, 1/3 map, Gift of Nature's Bounty, with
Ermor, Turmoil 3 Luck 3, 1/3 map, Arcane Nexus.
Its just not reasonable to include 9th level globals as part of the scale- how many games have you actually got and kept the gift up in? Maybe... 10%? 5%?

If Endoperez does that test, we will have pretty conclusive statistics, until then, it seems to me as though the two scale sets are fairly balanced, and in light of Pangaea's Maenads I would have to conclude that Turmoil/Luck is the superior choice.

Personally, I prefer it anyways- always liked gems more than money, as you can see below.

[Lingchih]

Valandil said:
Its pretty silly to compare turmoil/luck with order, on the assumptio nthat gift of natures bounty will be up. I mean, that isn't even going to be my first reseach priority. Actually, I'm probably not even going to cast it.

Compare Pangaea, Ord3, 1/3 map, Gift of Nature's Bounty, with
Ermor, Turmoil 3 Luck 3, 1/3 map, Arcane Nexus.
Its just not reasonable to include 9th level globals as part of the scale- how many games have you actually got and kept the gift up in? Maybe... 10%? 5%?

If Endoperez does that test, we will have pretty conclusive statistics, until then, it seems to me as though the two scale sets are fairly balanced, and in light of Pangaea's Maenads I would have to conclude that Turmoil/Luck is the superior choice.

Personally, I prefer it anyways- always liked gems more than money, as you can see below.

Holy Cows Udders Batman! Look at those numbers! Can I hire you for training?

[Renojustin]

Valandil said:
Its pretty silly to compare turmoil/luck with order, on the assumptio nthat gift of natures bounty will be up. I mean, that isn't even going to be my first reseach priority. Actually, I'm probably not even going to cast it.

Compare Pangaea, Ord3, 1/3 map, Gift of Nature's Bounty, with
Ermor, Turmoil 3 Luck 3, 1/3 map, Arcane Nexus.
Its just not reasonable to include 9th level globals as part of the scale- how many games have you actually got and kept the gift up in? Maybe... 10%? 5%?

If Endoperez does that test, we will have pretty conclusive statistics, until then, it seems to me as though the two scale sets are fairly balanced, and in light of Pangaea's Maenads I would have to conclude that Turmoil/Luck is the superior choice.

Personally, I prefer it anyways- always liked gems more than money, as you can see below.

Well, gold vs gems. How many gems do you really need to cast the best spells with your Pan battlemages? (which you can afford with Order 3) +40 or 50 a turn is all you really need in your appropriate areas, and you can hire Pans, summon Faerie Courts, and such till the rams come home with and equip them with as much materia as they need to fire off spells for a good long while.

Then again, how much gold do you need? Well, for starters you can jack all your PD to 50+ with no sweat with a turn or two of Bounty. Indies never take over on random events again, apart from the bonus you get against players. It's permanent and costs no upkeep. It's worth about 5 castles a turn. Ok, Arcane Nexus is cool too.

[vfb]

Endoperez said:
It's really hard to tell what's going on with luck on big games. The maximum of 3 events probably isn't hard-coded any more, but I have no idea how Luck scales.

I think I'll have to do a custom map for testing. Some ~100 province map with no/few seas, remove terrain and small/large tags, set two nations to start with 25 provinces, a temple in all of those to spread dominion and PD of 21 in all to lessen the effect of invasion events and perhaps a mapmove 10 flying supercombatant for both sides to get conquered provinces back in few turns.

That's pretty much what I did in the attachment above to get the six-lucky-event turn, Endo: level zero indies with a dom10 Caelum, dom 10 Helheim, both Luck-3 Turmoil-3 on a big map. I didn't bother taking back lost provinces, and ran it for about 150 turns.

[kasnavada]

I just ran another test using the following methodology :
- 9 starting provinces,
- pass your turn until the beginning of year 4.

Results are around what endoperez found. Base income was 1050 to 967 (down to 750 at turn 11...).
Results were :
- 34000 for order, and about 210 gems (mostly nature except 12 of them),
- 25000 gold for turmoil / nature, about 330 gems (270 nature), 2 heroes.

The difference in gold comes from :
- an indy event that made independant a 200 gold farmland around turn 11 (about 4600 gold lost, it may have been a bit later),
- random militia and flagellant costing money (final upkeep was 250), I'm supposing an "average" upkeep of 100 more than order, that amounts for 3600 gold.

Total amounts are (order / turmoil / luck) :
- 35000 / 33000 gold,
- 210 / 330 gems,
- 0 / 2 heroes,
- 301 / about 100 maenad generated by the lord of the wild.
- 0 / 1 magic item.

In fact I went against an opponent in easy and my military forces were bigger than theirs in the turmoil setting...

I doubt that other tests will prove otherwise, since the time span pretty much even things out, but feel free to speak about it in a "Effect of luck on pangaea" thread, since it affects all ages, and I think it deserve its own thread. However, I think we can safely conclude that order isn't the best choice, it's just a another way to play that isn't better or worse.