Big Problem - Unbalanced random events

[Wyatt Hebert]

Couple of questions for Raen.

What is your Luck level? I hear you are taking Order>1, but you aren't mentioning your luck scales (or I haven't noticed). My question about the 'brigand lair a year' phenomenon is to ask how many negative events should you be getting.

Second point, how many Provinces do you control? If you have many, many provinces, you'll get more events, simply due to events checking in each province (as I believe they do).

As a real world example, do you know how many (admittedly minor) geological events go on in the world _every day_?

10's to 100's (I'm talking earthquakes and active volcanoes, btw).

Toning down the events could be interesting, certainly... but if you are playing, e.g., on a huge map (say Orania) with few opponents and Misfortune 3 (for example), I think it's entirely accurate that you have a brigand uprising once a year _somewhere_ in your kingdom.

Just makes sense to me.

Wyatt

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by LintMan:
In my current game with Turmoil -1, Luck 0, I usually see several events per turn. At best, the good events give me a few gems, some gold, or maybe a new temple or some militia somewhere.

Well, you didn't pay for a luck scale, so you can't expect to get good events any more often than the bad ones.

Those good things just don't come close to balancing out the bad ones. That means that those who take order 3, misfortune -3 will get very few good events, but it will hardly matter: the good events just aren't that beneficial, and overall with order 3, Misfortune -1, they probably will *still* get less overall bad events than I do with turmoil -1, luck 0.

That's is extremely unlikely, since they will get only 5% fewer events than you will, and 80% of the events they do get will be bad events. They could expect that about a quarter of their games will be severely impacted in the first 10 turns by their scale choice, and they will have to continually deal with random attacks on their provinces. You get 5% more events in total, and only 50% of them will be bad. You also have 40 more nation points than they do to work with, so you can't expect yourself to benefit as much from the scales as they do.

I liked Saber Cherry's idea of events getting categorized into major/minor classes.

They already are, and always have been classified as such. This is an _old_ thread, and much of the information is not correct. It dates back to considerably before the first patch was even released.

[LintMan]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

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Originally posted by LintMan:
In my current game with Turmoil -1, Luck 0, I usually see several events per turn. At best, the good events give me a few gems, some gold, or maybe a new temple or some militia somewhere.

Well, you didn't pay for a luck scale, so you can't expect to get good events any more often than the bad ones.

---

I'm not saying that I expected to get any *more* good events than bad events. What I was saying was that the *negative impact* of the bad events was stronger than the *positive impact* of the good events, so that the *net impact* of Luck 0 was overall negative.

Intuitively, I would expect that at Luck 0, over the long run, you'd more or less expect to pretty much break even on good things vs bad things happening to you; the good outcomes would more or less offset the bad ones, and the bad outcomes would more or less offset the good ones.

I'm not talking about the number of good vs bad events, but the effects of those events.

As an exagerated example, lets say I played 10 hands of poker at a casino, and tell you I won 5 and lost 5 hands. You say "So you broke even, then?", and I say "No, I lost $750: on the hands I won, I got $50 each time, but on the hands I lost, I lost $150 each time". That's sort of what Luck 0 feels like to me: about even numbers of $50 wins and $150 losses.

This is all subjective, of course, but I've seen posters in other threads make similar comments, so I don't think it's just me.

(Note: I don't expect things to work out perfectly evenly, but it's not even close. At luck 0, I'm seeing what I'd consider major misfortune events *regularly*, while I've yet to see even a single lucky event of the same magnitude.)

quote:

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Those good things just don't come close to balancing out the bad ones. That means that those who take order 3, misfortune -3 will get very few good events, but it will hardly matter: the good events just aren't that beneficial, and overall with order 3, Misfortune -1, they probably will *still* get less overall bad events than I do with turmoil -1, luck 0.

That's is extremely unlikely, since they will get only 5% fewer events than you will, and 80% of the events they do get will be bad events. They could expect that about a quarter of their games will be severely impacted in the first 10 turns by their scale choice, and they will have to continually deal with random attacks on their provinces. You get 5% more events in total, and only 50% of them will be bad. You also have 40 more nation points than they do to work with, so you can't expect yourself to benefit as much from the scales as they do.

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Four steps on the order/turmoil scale only amounts to a 5% difference in number of events? So for my 100 events at turmoil 1, they'd have 95 at order 3?

I'm no expert, but from the postings I've read on these forums, I'd gathered that order had a much stronger effect on events than that. (I'd also gathered that Order 3/Misfortune -3 was a fairly common choice among players, with the misfortune paying for the order benefits, while the order scale reducing the misfortune pains).

Is there anyplace that explains the current system of how the luck/order scales tie into events? I searched and found a lengthy thread from January, but didn't see any exact descriptions of the way it works.

quote:

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I liked Saber Cherry's idea of events getting categorized into major/minor classes.

They already are, and always have been classified as such. This is an _old_ thread, and much of the information is not correct. It dates back to considerably before the first patch was even released.

---

Doh!

Even so, my suggestion that the good events should be as good as the bad events are bad still holds. My suspicion is that if you compared good and bad events side by side, either the good events will look fairly pale in comparison to the bad ones, or some bad events that I consider "major" are actually getting classed as "minor" ones.

-LintMan

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by LintMan:
I'm not saying that I expected to get any *more* good events than bad events. What I was saying was that the *negative impact* of the bad events was stronger than the *positive impact* of the good events, so that the *net impact* of Luck 0 was overall negative.

Sure. But it's overall negative for just about everybody since everyone has a similar set of events to draw from.

Four steps on the order/turmoil scale only amounts to a 5% difference in number of events? So for my 100 events at turmoil 1, they'd have 95 at order 3?

(Mis)fortune affects event frequency by 5% per step.
Order/Turmoil affects event frequency by 5% per step.

I'm no expert, but from the postings I've read on these forums, I'd gathered that order had a much stronger effect on events than that. (I'd also gathered that Order 3/Misfortune -3 was a fairly common choice among players, with the misfortune paying for the order benefits, while the order scale reducing the misfortune pains).

Order 3 misfortune 3 is asking to have your game plan ruined by negative events. If you want to test it, you have to consider that a MP game doesn't usually start over if your temple is destroyed on turn two.

Originally posted by LintMan:
I'm no expert, but from the postings I've read on these forums, I'd gathered that order had a much stronger effect on events than that. (I'd also gathered that Order 3/Misfortune -3 was a fairly common choice among players, with the misfortune paying for the order benefits, while the order scale reducing the misfortune pains).

I do not feel this is the case. But I may not be the majority. Previously to Patch 2.08 you may have been correct. There was no reason not to take Order 3/Misfortune 3 because it was free 21% Income increase with no real drawback.

However now that the scales have been modified I can only think of one game I have played since then that I have dared take Misfortune 3 while trying to compete. And I was burned by it.

That isn't to say I take more Turmoil than I ever did (since the only times I play Turmoil are for the hell of it, trying ideas, not with any serious intention) but that I tend to think of the Luck scale less on it's coupling with Order, but more on it's own merit and what level and frequency of events I am trying to avoid/gain.

Order3/Misfortune3 can still work like it used to, due to the factors of luck in general. But that is part of the game, if you play with Luck you tend to play with the dice. Sometimes it likes you even when you are playing Misfortune and other times it hates you even if you are playing Luck.

[ March 25, 2004, 06:30: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Chazar]

Hmm, the discussion seems to go back to its former topic... which was not my intention when I brought it up again:

I know that random events are controversial, and I dont see that there is even necessity to agree upon that! All I was asking for is whether there are more people like me who like severe random events after turn 10, say, but not before turn 10...

Of course, I can avoid the impact of early random events by setting a high number of starting provinces, but this is also a slight disadvantage for research-based strategies...

[ March 25, 2004, 09:37: Message edited by: Chazar ]

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally posted by Zen:

Order3/Misfortune3 can still work like it used to, due to the factors of luck in general. But that is part of the game, if you play with Luck you tend to play with the dice. Sometimes it likes you even when you are playing Misfortune and other times it hates you even if you are playing Luck.

Which is my major issue. 120 points is a LOT to invest in a scale in return for something that makes you a bit luckier on average in the NUMBER of lucky to unlucky events while still hitting you with extremely unfortunate random events every now and again. It certainly does not fit with the description of a land with a high luck scale: "Good events are common, and no one seems to have any bad luck". I can assure you that flooding, brigandry, and violent earthquakes feel like bad luck to most of the population

Make luck 3 have 0% chance of major bad events and an exceedingly low probability of minor bad events, that's what I say.


On a related issue, it seems from a limited amount of tests that the number of random events per turn is limited to 3? (a small number, at any rate) no matter how large the country is? If that is true, it certainly favours misfortune over luck, as the worst misfortune events are those that affect single provinces, and the more provinces you have, the greater chance that a poor irrelevant one is targeted, while the best luck events are those that give gold and/or gems, which are not tied to specific provinces and which lose relative value the longer you play. In other words, the larger the country, the less negative effect from choosing misfortune and the less positive effect from choosing luck.... That just seems so.. wrong.

I hope I am mistaken on this issue.

[ March 25, 2004, 10:07: Message edited by: Peter Ebbesen ]

[Zurai]

Actually the *best* Luck event is the one that adds population to a province. Unfortunately it appears to be tied to Order scale, and is already rare... meaning you're not very likely to see it at all. IMO, that event should be at least as common under high order as the "restless population" even is under turmoil (ie very frequent).

[Chazar]

Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen:

On a related issue, it seems from a limited amount of tests that the number of random events per turn is limited to 3?

I am pretty sure that I have read it somewhere here in this forum that the number of random events per player is limited to 3, but I dont know where. Nevertheless I am happy that way... :-)

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally posted by Zurai:
Actually the *best* Luck event is the one that adds population to a province.

I must disagree. It takes an awful number of rounds for a population boost to generate more money that the +500 gold event (and three times as many to beat the +1500 gold). Of course, there is the added impact on resources, the utility of which is highly dependent on exactly which province is targeted.

Unfortunately it appears to be tied to Order scale, and is already rare... meaning you're not very likely to see it at all. IMO, that event should be at least as common under high order as the "restless population" even is under turmoil (ie very frequent). [/QB]

Which is where we part company. To my mind, bad events should not be very frequent under turmoil IF your domian is lucky.