Conceptual Balance (Discussion)

[FrankTrollman]

What I do mind is misinformation being spread to newbier players.

Heck, I mind people going off as if their personal play style were somehow divine writ and that other playing styles were somehow "wrong." Telling people about your play style and how it works when you use it is not "misinformation."

-Frank

[KissBlade]

FrankTrollman said:

Heck, I mind people going off as if their personal play style were somehow divine writ and that other playing styles were somehow "wrong." Telling people about your play style and how it works when you use it is not "misinformation."

-Frank

Stating which effects are more powerful than another isn't playing style. It is mathematics. Considering this is a thread about BALANCE, I don't even say what playing styles have to do with it.

[Teraswaerto]

I'm sure you are right in saying order is clearly better in most cases, but:

Have you actually done math on how powerful luck is? Seems it would be rather complicated to calculate a thing like that, especially since you get more than money with good events (magic items, etc.).

[KissBlade]

Teraswaerto said:
I'm sure you are right in saying order is clearly better in most cases, but:

Have you actually done math on how powerful luck is? Seems it would be rather complicated to calculate a thing like that, especially since you get more than money with good events (magic items, etc.).

It's true, you do get some really uber events with Luck. I had a lot of fun with my old max all positive scales but Turmoil 2 back in Dom II because everytime you get that 1500 gold event, you just want to jump out of your seat. But you've said it yourself, Order is clearly better in most cases. Luck's problem is, not all the extra events it adds are positive. Which is EXTREMELY LAME. In order words, you have actually a good chance of having a crappy event from those extra events you're getting from turmoil or luck! Even worse is some of the "positive" events aren't even positive! Oh look, you got 60 militia in the same province as your army who's now eating up the valuable food from your REAL troops. Yay =(

Balance wise, Luck needs a buff, Order needs a nerf. It's obviously not as simple as simply saying that but I'm actually pretty convinced that some of the current imbalances we're seeing is simply because of the Order scale's existence. I'd like to really play some test MP games where you ban the Order scale and ONLY the order scale and seeing where it goes.

Edit: Dom II. not III.

[Zen]

The main difference between Luck and Order from Dom2 to Dom3, is that gold across the board was raised, and Order as a base % modifier was raised at the same rate as the general gold per population.

Luck's events, max number of events per turn (3) have not been scaled, like the gold per population or even resources. So bad events are a drop in the bucket of gold (what is 100 gold as a bad or good event in Dom3's rich gold world, gem events while nice, have less of an impact since Magic (especially summons) has less of a total gamewide impact as opposed to Dom2).

Also, Order not only gets you the gold you want, but allows at the very least a free 40 points (Misfortune 1, with order 3, is pretty standard when hunting for points as it's overall impact is very low).

Luck with a different eventlist would be as strong as in Dom2, if it scaled to the changes that were made between Dom2 to Dom3.

[PDF]

Well, I think the problem with Luck/Misf is rather with ..events themselves !
As Zen said they were not scaled to new gold standard
Plus we still get the damned Militia as "good" event
And then some gamebreaking events (such as Plague) can occur even with Luck and Growth on the first game turn !! So the best solution is to have the less possible events (Order3) and just hope the bad won't occur too soon - after that they're not that bad.

With that there's really few point in taking Luck, the good'ol O3/M3 combo is still the thing to do.
But no amount of balance tweaking will solve the real issue, the real solution would be that events become moddable...

[curtadams]

I don't know the numbers but I certainly think the percentages for luck have been changed. My luck scale certainly seems to make way more of a difference than it used to. The number of bad events certainly decreases with luck - "is good" goes up faster than "% events". There's also some tweaking to the severity. I just had a 6000-gold event on Luck 3 and I've never seen that with less luck.

Luck becomes more useful over the long term. A significant number of the good and bad events involve permanent income changes - gaining mines, population, and occaisionally sites, versus losing population. Eventually a luck country would pass an order country.

[Graeme Dice]

There's a maximum of three random events per turn. This means means that luck is luck can only be more useful than order in the long term if the number of provinces you control is at or below the point where you receive your three events per turn.

[dirtywick]

PDF said:
With that there's really few point in taking Luck, the good'ol O3/M3 combo is still the thing to do.
But no amount of balance tweaking will solve the real issue, the real solution would be that events become moddable...

M3 is just crazy in a longer game, even with O3. M2 is better, but you'll still be constantly attacked by Barbarians to where you'll need a significant amount of PD in every province you want to keep.

But really, the only big advantage that Luck/Turmoil gives is you'll have a lot more gems that route, it's not even close. Nations that need a lot of summons/battle magic gems would probably do better with Luck than Order IMO.

[KissBlade]

Mm... I'm not sure you'll get constantly attacked with M2. I never take M3 though since it does seem a little risky and not to mention you'll never get a hero. Also while Luck is better late game since gold isn't as important, you need to factor in that Order gives you a very strong early/mid game which transitions into a stronger late game compared to turmoil/luck. Though I could see a possible argument for Luck/Turmoil in a low magic sites setting.