Please advise: can misfortune change on its own?

[Cainehill]

Karacan said:
Depends. If one player suffers from barbarian hordes (or, even better, those evil knights), a temple and a lab burndown during the first four turns, I'd be all for a mulligan. That game is certainly over for him.

From everything else, even only two of those events, there's a comeback.

I usually take order 2 luck 3 or order 3 luck 2 to prevent these things from happening. No, really, I do.

Problem is that as the game stands, _any_ amount of luck or misfortune or turmoil is asking for those events. For that matter, arguably someone who didn't take Order 3 and Luck-0 (remember, both luck-1 and misfortune-1 increase likelihood of bad events) has earned those random events you list. In something like 1 of 287 games, they _will_ happen to you. No biggie in SP, as you simply restart.

But the way random events work currently, they will happen. Any amount of Luck/Misfortune/Turmoil is simply begging for them to happen, and yes - I play those scales. I've had the temple burn down, 50% population loss, and my province besieged, all in my capital in the first 5 turns. I didn't like it a bit. But - I took Turmoil and luck. And inside the first 10 turns, I got a magic item, 1500 gold, and "a lot of gems".

I'd still rather see the random events severely tweaked : less catastrophic events for Luck-pretenders in the first 5 turns, and events not capped at 3 per turn, which really benefits Misfortune nations and hurts Luck nations.

But that doesn't seem likely to happen. In the meantime, I really think that mulligans for anything other than map screwups are rewarding players for taking scales that are designed to hurt them sometimes.

[Cainehill]

Oh - again, I personally think that any positive scale should, in theory, balance any negative scale at the same level. Even in theory, that's very difficult for a game as (Hi Arryn) complex as Dom2.

But currently the scales are .... somewhat less than balanced, by a long shot. Remember - I'm one of the players who tries Turmoil-3, Luck-3 paired, and I don't spend much time complaining.

But it still goes back to when Zen mocked me (reasonably gently) as a newbie for doing T3/L3 pairings, and they simply aren't viable for most nations. ( People more justifiably mocked me for smiting the arch evil Ermor by ... taking provinces away from Pythium, but hey - it was a VQ in the water, it was a purple flag, and dammit! The inquisition is better known for enthusiasm than wisdom, and I was playing Marignon in one of my first 3 non-demo, non SP games (yes, they were the same 3 games ))

Certain scales are currently considered unbalanced : Order and Magic on the good side, especially, and many players think Death is a no-brainer for a good sized map, and order and misfortune is consider a NoB by most also. (this was an edit, so crucify me only if you're cute.)

It would be nice if there weren't so many no brainers. But that's complicated - kudos to Zen for only doing the pretenders at first.

Still : Growth seems like it ought to give population increase more often. Luck really ought to eliminate the catastrophic events in the first 5 turns, at least. Certain events (we all know the ones) shouldn't be considered "lucky" anymore - I don't know a nation that would consider them lucky, except possibly Mictlan (only nation left I haven't played). Productivity ....

Heh. Productivity I would be glad to hear people sing hymns to. But they don't. Too many nations / themes take sloth as a no-brainer, and even ones with resource-heavy troups simply take an expense castle to make up for Sloth.

Growth, Productivity, and Luck, don't get considered are being particularly "good" scales. Heat / Cold is only considered with respect to neighbors, and personally, if I know there are 3 cold nations and no heat ones, I'm torn: should I take heat to screw them? No. I should take cold, since my territories are going to be cold anyways.

Order and Magic are generally considered "duhs!" with nothing countering them. No one, and I mean no one, takes Drain. (Okay - I think I would have won a game using drain with Helheim and death research items, but that involved Sheap, Norfleet, and the game hasn't run in 3 weeks)

Sheesh - going back to read what I wrote up top, and I'm like, "who was that!"

Thing is - some of the negative scales can be used 'creatively', but generally only with a death nation, Ulm, or maybe a stealth nation. And it really does seem (in my long winded way) that the scales should balance.

Currently they don't, at least not from the POV of someone who plays everything but (ewwww!) mictlan and ermor.

[The Panther]

Base Ulm is the only nation who should take a drain scale, and they should always take drain 3. This is due to the fact that the master smith, which is its only mage, is immune to any drain scale. The 240 extra pretender points for Ulm with drain 3 compared to all other nations with magic 3 is quite nice. Of course, Ulm is a weak nation, so this hardly matters. But other than Ulm, magic 2 or 3 is a NoB.

And, other than Ermor, all good players seem to pick order 3, as that is the best positive scale all around. It gives great income to provide for the inevitable mad castling. Sloth 3 is almost automatic for all races, even high resource nations like Ulm.

As bad as it is, though, I doubt there will be balanced scales until Dom 3.

In my standard pretender design for pretty most races, I pick:
Order 3
Sloth 3
Misfortune 2
Magic 3

Which costs only 40 design points. I then mess around with heat/cold and growth/death to balance whatever magic schools and dominion I can afford.

[PDF]

Panther,
I'm not sure Sloth-3 is that good a bet : the lowering in resources early, certainly slows initial expansion - except against very weak indies.
The penalty also exist for all the game regarding Capitol-only units, so if you want to produce Temple Guards, Wardens, etc .. your rate will be only 4/5 of a "normal" rate with prod-0.
Personnally I rather take prod-0 or +1 (with "heavy" nations)and pays for it with Death-1.

Order-3/Misf-2 is a near-standard, but Turm-2 Luck-3 is a refreshing and fun change - you get piles of gold and gems falling from the skies ...

[Arralen]

I only play with "very difficult" research these days. Gives a healthy timeframe where national -buyable- units are useful.

And productivity really shines with that setup

[The Panther]

You know, Arralen, that sounds like a refreshing idea there! Very hard research sounds like a fun time for sure. I think Ulm would be a pretty decent race under those circumstances.

I expect that you would almost have to ban Caelum, though, as I have found that Caelum (probably more so than any other race) is almost unpunished by very hard research. With it's significantly underpriced mages that can be built anywhere, Caelum mages can get quickness and lightning bolts so very fast regardless of any settings. The only real penalty for Caelum is the long delay to the air queens.

I would like to try a game where productivity actually matters for once!

[Cohen]

In my Mod I changed something about scales.
Here scales change:

Growth now make pop growing/dying at double rate (0.4%) and +/- 3% gold at point.
Productivity is +/- 20% resources at point, and +/- 4% gold.
Fortune is now 10% chances of event (instead of 5%). Still 10% modifier from good/bad even.

My aim is to make them more useful if you pay for them, and less exploitable if you want to take design points.
My Balance Mod is still under work however.