Death scale on Abyssia

[licker]

If you are taking order and luck you are minimizing the usefulness of luck, and if you also take death you are minimizing the usefulness of order (mid/late game).

Seems to me it would be interesting to look at T3P3H3L3D3 and whatever you can pull in magic/drain depending on what points you have left.

Of course T3 is painful early game if you don't get some BIG luck events to even it out, but then again you can alchemize your fire gems if you really need to.

Alternatively don't take T3, just keep it neutral and drop your production back to 1 or 2. I would imagine that early game you are hurting more for production than gold, and luck cannot help (well not as often anyway) with production as it can with gold.

I'm also pretty sure that the best bless to take is E9, and not so sure you really need anyother bless at all, which makes an awake cyclops interesting as if you nab a dom9 you can just plow through indies like mad (other than knights). Taking an awake scorpian king is also interesting as you can fairly easilly sneak in a f4.

Then again you don't have much magic diversity (in any age I think), but what do you really need the diversity for again? Blood and Astral are already givens, and those can form the backbone of any mid/late game strategy. Nature might be nice, but nature is really easy to pick up with indies. Death is probably the one with the most potential synergy for you, but meh, I wouldn't necessarily just take it on a pretender for a few extra blood summons.

[cleveland]

Originally Posted by licker

If you are taking order and luck you are minimizing the usefulness of luck

Perhaps you aren't maximizing the benefits of good luck, but you are minimizing the damage of bad luck, which - particularly with a Death scale - can be much more useful.

[licker]

Originally Posted by cleveland

Perhaps you aren't maximizing the benefits of good luck, but you are minimizing the damage of bad luck, which - particularly with a Death scale - can be much more useful.

I was under the impression that many of the D3 events were also tied to misfortune scales, so taking L3 (or just not misfortune) would be some protection anyway.

Pity Abyssia has no fortune tellers I guess.

In any case, D3O3 seems a bad combo just due to the fact that they cancel the benefits of each other out, especailly later in the game, and especially for a blood nation.

Well I suppose we'll need some actual empirical evidence though

I should note that I've played alot of LA Ulm with T3L3 (though no death) and not had much of an issue with negative events. However, LAUlm does have fortune tellers, but I have them concentrated in only a few provinces anyway.

[JimMorrison]

While you get less events overall with Order+Luck, I'm not so sure it "minimizes" the benefits of a Luck scale. Granted, you are less likely to strike it rich early in the game, but the synergy simply matures later in the game - and there is a synergy.

I fought a D3 Abysia a few games ago, and it was hell. Of course, I was Caelum (under other circumstances, Caelum is devastating to Abysia), so H3+D3 meant that many provinces have 10-20 supply. With no national access to Nature, all my little birdies were diseased by the time I had taken just a handful of territories. So I think that the disincentive towards attacking Abysia, as well as the protection afforded from counter attacks (he was the aggressor, I annihilated his main force, and then fell apart in his Dominion), are factors that shouldn't be discounted.

Ironically, I think that the D3 with Abysia requires a specific strategy, involving high starting Dominion, rapid Dominion pushing early in the game, and then a second year rush of your most likely neighbor. If you can manage a build and a strategy that has you annex another capital very early on, then I think you find that those creation points can and should pay off in other areas. Obviously G3 is awesome for concerted Blood hunting, but the difference in D3 from G3 is 240 points, which is (almost) the difference between Imprisoned and Awake, for example.

Also bear in mind, 2D is relatively slow pop loss, and shields you from the worst of the negative events, while affording you most of the benefit of a Death scale. Even those who have Nature magic, will find that they have to invest a sizable amount of gems into keeping their forces supplied in your Dominion, or starve.

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by licker

If you are taking order and luck you are minimizing the usefulness of luck, and if you also take death you are minimizing the usefulness of order (mid/late game).

With more than 20 provinces, Order won't normally stop you getting 3 random events per turn. And they'll be just as lucky as if you took Turmoil. Death will interfere with gold production by the late game, true. But by then you're generally more concerned with gem income anyway.

[licker]

Originally Posted by Gregstrom

With more than 20 provinces, Order won't normally stop you getting 3 random events per turn. And they'll be just as lucky as if you took Turmoil. Death will interfere with gold production by the late game, true. But by then you're generally more concerned with gem income anyway.

I have not found this to be the case, even with T3L3. Perhaps its bad luck/small sample size though.

[WaltF4]

Originally Posted by Gregstrom

With more than 20 provinces, Order won't normally stop you getting 3 random events per turn. And they'll be just as lucky as if you took Turmoil.

Do we know the probability for some generic random event occuring? Is it something like 10% chance in any one province with no modification from order or luck scales?

[WraithLord]

I have tried T3,S3,H3,D3,L3,M1 in many SP games b/c I want to learn via experiments whether this setup is competitive.
I got to these scales following this logic - D3 is thematic and also Abysia has some advantage in it (food and taxes) that doesn't apply to its enemies. Now if you take D3 it kind of takes the point out of O3 right?- so there goes T3. Now you take out order and have high turmoil so luck 3 is a no-brainer.
Anyway this doesn't hold, usually Abysia is off to an awful start- lacking income, receiving not beneficial events (PD and gems are not useful at the start of the game) and sometimes also bad events. Then comes the first winter and cuts through your old aged mages. I was unimpressed with these scales to say the least.

I'd keep the D3 but change to O3 and L-2. Yes income will dwindle, but at least at a known rate and if you expand (which steady flow of income early on will greatly help to do) you could get more income.

Now, had Abysia received access to early game low level fire summons spell that summons "soldier" level units (for creating armies for early expansion - what with lack of income and low resource is not possible) and some fortune telling the thematic setup I mentioned above would have been much better.
Usually those fire gems just keep piling b/c low level fire spells are quite awful. They are marginally good for complementary units (fire drake) but not for making armies.