What Are the Drawbacks of High Misfortune?

[AlgaeNymph]

I'm phobic of pretender builds that set the scales at 2 or 3 misfortune. I want to know how a high misfortune will bite me in the blubber.

[lebarjack]

The first example coming to my mind is the loss of the temple/lab in the first months... Losing one third of the population in the capitole is an other example.

I think misfortune can make the beginning of the game a real disaster, if you are unlucky ^^
On the long run, it tends to deplete your population with all those disaster, but is largely attenuated by 3 scales of order.

[Jazzepi]

I've never regretted taking Order3 Misfortune2 and I've done it every game that I've not taken Turmoil3 Luck 3.

Generally it's more annoying then actually bad for you. Barbarians attack, and then you have to send some troops out to mop them up. In the 300-400 turns I've played with O3M2 I've only had like 2 temples and 2 labs destroyed. More often then not you just deal with the barbarian attacks.

Jazzepi

[Sombre]

Mostly with order misfortune you get waves of barbarian attacks. However these can be worse than 'annoying' because they can wipe out forts under construction, wreck paths of flat territory used by units with good mapmove, etc.

If you go misfortune 3, you can never get national heroes turning up.

[OmikronWarrior]

Random events are actually dependent on more scales then just order/turmoil and luck/misfortune. For example, having death means getting plague events which will absolutely wreck your population. I was actually just in a game where somebody had two such events in their capitol within the first 12 turns. On the flipside, growth allows the "ancient presence" event, which reduces even the most populous populations to a couple hundred people and causes an attack. Luckily its pretty rare.

I usually go Order-3, Misfortune-2, and at least Growth-1. There is no comprehensive list of random events and whats required to precurse them, though. So, I recommend you play several SP games at different setting to get a feel of the differences. I do know some events seem to be worse at different levels of misfortune, such as barbarian attacks having more barbarians.

[Jazzepi]

Sombre said:
Mostly with order misfortune you get waves of barbarian attacks. However these can be worse than 'annoying' because they can wipe out forts under construction, wreck paths of flat territory used by units with good mapmove, etc.

If you go misfortune 3, you can never get national heroes turning up.

This is very important. If you're building a fort, you should sit an army on that spot, or build enough PD to fend off 40-60 barbarians.

Jazzepi

[NTJedi]

I've noticed independent Trolls attack way more frequently with Misfortune_3.

[Tuidjy]

I believe Order 3, Life 1, Misfortune 2 is safe. When I need the points,
I even play with O3L1M3. It's not the end of the world... But Misfortune
and Death scales, in combination, are a disaster.

In any case, it very much depends on what kind of PD you have. A good
PD like Pythium, Tir-Na-Nog or Arco laughs at invaders. Niefelheim,
on the other hand is savaged by barbarians until turn 30ish, when they
become training dummies for your Jarls.

[Randvek]

Main thing I experience is my temples dropping left and right. Man that gets annoying.

[Meglobob]

What Are the Drawbacks of High Misfortune?

Annoyance mainly, will increase micromanagement because you need to have 1 or 2 mobile armies to take care of barbarian (most common), knight, vine men, troglodytes and troll(least common) attacks. Those attacks can occasionally really hurt, especially when you are at war.

Also, no heros with misfortune 3 and a remote chance with 2.

To be honest the chances of losing your lab on the 1st turn is very, very, very rare and remote. But I always buy a mage on the 1st turn just in case, as otherwise its virtually game over.

Other misfortune events like raising unrest, plagues and whatnot are not really that bad, just minor annoyances.

I usually play all my SP games with luck 3 as its far more fun but in MP to be competitive order 3 misfortune 3 is a must for alot of nations.

I am currently playing a game with scales of turmoil 1, sloth 3, heat 3, misfortune 2, drain 3 and doing fairly well. So its 'manageable'.