Thoughts on making "luck" equally attractive

[Coldshard]

Chris_Byler said:
It seems to me that the simplest way to adjust order/luck would be to raise the event per turn cap to an amount that is unlikely to be hit in the competitive stage of any game - say 50 events per nation per turn. The non-scaling of luck/misfortune to large empires is no longer a problem; large lucky empires could potentially get several free buildings a turn along with a few dozen free units, substantial extra gem income etc. Large unlucky empires, on the other hand... well, let's just say it's a good thing you have that extra gold from order.

Replacing the militia event with X gold worth of some national troop (hopefully a reasonably decent one) would be a nice change, too. I'd much rather have 20 free huskarls, city guards, marverni nobles, or hastatii than 40 militia - and that's just the mundane troops.

Even a decent indy troop would be better than militia.

Yes! I actually view getting random militia and such to be a bad event, even if it is listed as a good one. A bunch of guys who arent good at fighting appear without a commander likely several provinces away from a front line or any commander that could go pick them up.. so basically it is just an income drain until I can waste turns picking them up and getting them killed

[Xietor]

i wonder if the event cap, like the unit cap, is one we have to live with though. Other solutions may have to be sought.

And I think having 50 lucky events per turn would be way overpowered. heh.

[quantum_mechani]

One thing that has not been mentioned is a particularly nasty side effect of the event limit. If you own significantly more provinces than your dominion spreads to, your luck scale bonus can become almost negligible (bad events from the outer provs override whatever good you'd get). So that puts yet another burden luck- to reap your benefit at all you have to get your dominion everywhere. This is as opposed to order where you are doing fine as long as you get it over your population centers.

[Xietor]

That is a another very good point QM.

And one that does not necessarily have to be addressed through the event cap limit, however. If you have luck 3, maybe weight can be given 1st to provinces in which you actually have the highest luck. that may be complicated.

Or maybe your provinces that have any positive dominion, can be treated as having your max luck in them. And enemy luck can be coded not to count against your own event limit.


Not having a clue about coding, i have no idea about the scale of difficulty any of these items presents.

[JimMorrison]

On mercenaries - It would be fun if a "mercenary" company were formed around each nation, using one of their actual randomly appearing heroes as the leader, and a thematically sensible contingent of high end troops from that nation. At game start, each nation IN the game would have their company turned off, all the nations NOT in the game, would exist in that form, as "adventuring warriors from a far off land".

On event cap - Ultimately I think this is the #1 thing that NEEDS to be done. Misf2-3 players consistently state that the idea is to grow so fast anyways, that you meet and exceed that limit as early as possible, thus your relative gains are past the fulcrum of statistical balance for most of the game. I am not so sure about 50 events, but if the cap were even raised to 10 events, it would greatly alter the overall perspective on Luck scale, I'm sure, and find it not only more competitive in larger maps, but more enjoyable to play with. If it were possible to cap "territory loss" events at the same time, that would be nice though..... Say on a 400 province map, 5 players left in contention with ~80 provinces apiece, someone suddenly gets 10 barbarians deep in his back territory where he hasn't been producing troops - ironically sieging his nearest castles in the area..... Luck needs to be made more relevant, without suddenly having the power to decisively win or lose the game due to 1 turn worth of completely unexpected events (I know, if you have 80 territories, you should be able to afford some PD, but what if you are Nief or a monkey nation? then what! ).


Oh and Xietor, you do know they finally raised the unit cap? So don't lose hope yet.

[kasnavada]

I think the same that testing 9 provinces for 30 turns should be equal to having 270 provinces in a single turn. That would "balance" luck better than anything else...

The single problem with having 50 events a turn would be your lab size actually. Since it's limited to 50 pieces and that random events happen after forging you will lose some of the items on a big map. But some people already lose item on a large map because their construction needs exceed 50 item / turn anyway, so, sooner or later it will have to be made bigger as well.

Some of the good events that actually are not good like the militia have been changed : you get fewer and fewer militia these days, actually most of the time you get national troops instead, so it's not completly useless.

And the population grows events should be far more numerous too... there is about a dozen spell and bad event that reduce population and AFAIK only one that rise it.

[Chris_Byler]

Not all events give an item, I don't think the lab size would necessarily be a problem there. (Although it still wouldn't hurt to raise it for people who want to play obscenely huge games.) Since the events happen after your own forging, you would never lose a deliberately forged item because you got too many event items, only the reverse (which is just equivalent to no event at all).

When I suggested 50 as the cap, I was deliberately intending it to be a number that you *wouldn't* actually reach - so that for programming purposes there might still be a cap, but for gameplay purposes there effectively wouldn't. But maybe on those 1000+ province maps, a T3/L3 empire could actually have 50 events, I don't know. At that point the game would probably be out of its competitive stages anyway.


A player with a mere 80 provinces would be very unlikely to get 10 events, I think, let alone to have them all be indy attacks, even if they have heavy misfortune without any order at all. To get 10 events of any kind with any regularity you'd probably need hundreds of provinces, and even then, most would be unrest, loss of tax revenue, population death, gem loss, building destruction, and other minor annoyances.


Oh yeah: if IW is reading this thread, IMO troop events should always come with a leader, if they don't already. Don't make the player waste a turn (or more than one) getting a commander there to pick them up - some of those troops are going to be slow enough to reach the front as it is (where they may or may not be good for anything more than arrow bait/lancebreakers). Even a generic indy commander would be enough to lead the units somewhere else where they can be placed under someone else's command.


P.S. I just had an idea for a new event: {Commander}'s magic item {item} has mysteriously lost its power and crumbled to dust. (Artifacts should be immune; drain scale makes it more likely or is required.) Considering the fact that your luck scale is unlucky for enemies invading your dominion, this could make it rather unpleasant to invade a lucky Ulm. (Or worse, a lucky sea nation!)

Also, terrain-dependent events that work similarly to Lure of the Deep/Beckoning, or have units buried by avalanches, rockslides, drowned in bogs or get lost until they die of exposure in wastelands. (Appropriate survival abilities protect.)

Without reform to the event caps etc., new events won't necessarily fix the order/luck balance. But they're still cool. Why shouldn't bad luck in harsh terrain include the sometimes-deadly mishaps that go with that terrain?

Given the effect of enemy luck, unlucky events that strike directly at an army in the field would actually help a lucky nation defend its dominion from invaders - in addition to indies attacking your rear and potentially cutting your supply lines, you'd also potentially lose troops to deadly accidents and lose magic items *at the front* that might be hard to replace quickly before the next battle. In the meantime the lucky nation is getting free reinforcements to help fight you, and a hero to lead them.

[MaxWilson]

What makes you think it's a cap instead of sublinear growth?

-Max