Petition to change LUCK\ORDER Scales

[Catquiet]

At the moment taking Order +3 is almost mandatory for multi-player games, while luck +3 is fairly useless.

ORDER needs to be toned down to +5% increase in gold revenue per tick with no affect on random events. A well-ordered society with strong laws is going to get hit by hurricanes just as often as a more relaxed society.

+ or - LUCK should reduce the severity of the random events on the opposite end of the scale. With +1 Luck a nation should be able to avoid the population killing bad events, with +3 Luck bad events should be minor inconveniences at most.

Anyone else want to join me in calling for these changes?

[Teraswaerto]

Not necessarily those exact changes, but yeah, something should change to make luck more, and order less, effective.

[apoger]

I'd rather have all the scales back to the Dom1 levels... where they ALL mattered.

Right now Proudction and Death are shadows of their former selves. A land of ultimate production and growth has only 24% better taxes and 60% better production over a land of ultimate sloth and death. Keep in mind the the land of sloth and death gets 560 nation points over the land of production and growth.

I know Illwinter disliked the idea that players wanted Order +3, Prod +3, Growth +3. However it's natural to WANT lots of good things. It was still a challenge to get what you wanted and still be able to make a good nation. Hard choices were called for.

In Dom2 things have been changed to make Prod and Growth much less important. Order was cranked to take up the slack. Luck was largely reduced in potency as well.

I contend that the Dom2 scales are just as imbalanced, if not more so.

I prefer Order being used to influence unrest levels, while Prod & Growth influenced taxes. It made perfect sense. The "simplification" in Dom2 did nothing to help the game. It didn't even stop hiking taxes and patrolling.

This is just my opinion, of course. However I think IW would have gotten much better effect by leaving the excellent balance of Dom1 alone. If they wanted to pump the potency of pretender magic (which seems to be their intent) then it could have been done simply by reducing the nation point costs of magic picks. This would have created minimal disruption to the system that was already working well.

Sorry to drop that long discuusion on the topic of Order/Luck... but the system of scale changes is part and parcel of the issue.

[SurvivalistMerc]

I don't think they would have to mess with the scales at all if they would just do one other thing....

Make the good (lucky) events as desirable as the bad (unlucky) events are undesirable. In this way, taking order to reduce the frequency of events could prove costly. Taking unluck would cheat your empire of the very amazing things that could happen if you were lucky.

Just changing the random events could make balanced luck and order scales as desirable as order 3, unluck 3, which is my current favorite.

[apoger]

>Make the good (lucky) events as desirable as the bad (unlucky) events are undesirable. In this way, taking order to reduce the frequency of events could prove costly. Taking unluck would cheat your empire of the very amazing things that could happen if you were lucky.


I agree. However IW seems to have a thing for creating a game where there is downward economic spiral. All their decisions have gone that way. I'm not particularly happy with this philosophy.

In a magic world where gods exude population destroying death, there should also be gods that exude an explosion of life.

If high taxes create death, then low taxes should create growth.

If misfortune creates feared events, then luck should create equally welcome events.


I favor a balanced approach, which IMHO would be logical and fun. Obviously Illwinter disagrees, and it's their game. Still, I paid my 50 bucks, and as such feel that I can ***** and moan about my perceptions of their game, for what it's worth.

[ November 22, 2003, 21:22: Message edited by: apoger ]

[Treebeard]

I've suggested it before, but I'll do it again, let the intensity of good and bad effects to be regulate by the luck scale, so a flood on a unluck 3 nation be stronger than a flood on a luck 3 nation. That would do wonders to make luck/turmoil more attractive.

[Jasper]

In Dominions 1 the power of Order was held in check by the fact it let you raise your taxation rate -- but that rate was limited to 200% for everyone. A few extra patrollers and a Order 0 faction made nearly as much money as an order 3 faction. Removing this limitation while simultaneously decreasing the value of Growth and Production was overkill IMHO.

I like the event effects of order/turmoil, but think it's income effects should be 5% rather than 10%. I think it would also be worthwhile to tweak growth and production income changes from 2% to 3%.

Luck on the other hand seems to basically have a "metagame" problem with the kinds of events that exist. Bad events seem to be frequently painfull, while good events seem to be mostly innocous.

As Treebeard suggests, this could be handled by giving all events a +/- rating, and randomly determing the luck level of an event, rather than whether it's simply good or bad. For example, a "d6 - d6 + luck" roll, combined with rating events between +/- 8.

[Jasper]

One further thought is that bad events are nearly always a problem, but very often good events are unusefull due to circumstance. (e.g. gems, items, or militia you have no use for). In balance then the good events need to be more powerfull than the bad effects in order for them to have the same effect.

Another dichotomy is that bad events truly hurt early (e.g. losing a lab, temple, or population), while good events have less of an effect.

Plus the inherent unreliability of luck will always make it less desireable than Order/Produciton/Growth unless it's more potent, especially since it's effects don't scale with empire size.

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by Jasper:

As Treebeard suggests, this could be handled by giving all events a +/- rating, and randomly determing the luck level of an event, rather than whether it's simply good or bad. For example, a "d6 - d6 + luck" roll, combined with rating events between +/- 8. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm not sure I follow the +/- rating thing. Is this the needed luck or the strength of the event? And how does the dice fit in the system?

Could you elaborate, please.

[Treebeard]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
I'm not sure I follow the +/- rating thing. Is this the needed luck or the strength of the event? And how does the dice fit in the system?

Could you elaborate, please. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, let me exemplify. A rain event is determined by the game. A d6 roll is made, and the luck scale of the province is used as a modifier.

Result -2 to 0: catastrophic rain (1/4 of the population dies)
Result 1 to 3: extreme rain (1/6 of the population dies)
Result 4 to 6:heavy rain (1/8 of the population dies)
Result 7 to 9: severe rain (1/10 of the population dies)

And so on.

[Catquiet]

I have come up with a second suggestion for Luck/Order that might be easier to implement.

ORDER scale gives +/- 6% gold per tick. +/- 10% chance of random events.

LUCK scale gives +/- 4% gold per tick in addition to it's current effects.

GROWTH and PRODUCTIVITY scales would give +/- 3% gold per tick to make them more attractive.

So at +3 ORDER, -3 Luck you would have +6% gold with rare bad events.

At +3 Luck, -3 Order you would have -6% gold with more common good luck events.

What do you think? Would you consider these scale effects more balanced than what is currently in the game?

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
I'm not sure I follow the +/- rating thing. Is this the needed luck or the strength of the event? And how does the dice fit in the system?

Could you elaborate, please. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Give all events an Ars Magica style +/- rating for how good or bad they are. 0 events would be neutral, the more positive the better, the more negative the worse.

When an event happens in a province roll a d6 and subtract from it another d6 to get a "luck roll" that centers around 0. Then add the province's luck scale to skew results, and pick an event with that luck level. You'd also need to filter out inappropriate events based upon other scales, etc.

[apoger]

>What do you think? Would you consider these scale effects more balanced than what is currently in the game?

I like this suggestion.

The only change I'd make is for Production and Growth. I'd like to see these scales have more effect on... production and growth (or lack of such).

[Taqwus]

Incidentally, with regards to Luck, certain nations might have differing views on what's lucky or not...

As Soul Gate or Ashen Empire Ermor, for instance, I would not exactly be thrilled to get a bunch of militia, since their maintenance cost can be very bad for an already weak economy. A leader has to be rushed ASAP to send them to die. A lucky "dead Ermor" equivalent would probably be tombs opening up...

[trebuchet]

Luck and Ermor have always been something of an odd couple; I think trying to adjust Luck's effects to Ermor while tweaking the balance of Luck as a whole may be too difficult to worry about. But then, I may just be so accustomed to it that I am blind to what others may see as a problem.

While some of the good luck events don't effect Ermor, just as many of the bad events don't effect them either. All in all with Ashen Empire Ermor, if I take Turmoil 3 and neutral luck scale, I come out well ahead (usually).

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Catquiet:
I have come up with a second suggestion for Luck/Order that might be easier to implement.

ORDER scale gives +/- 6% gold per tick. +/- 10% chance of random events.

LUCK scale gives +/- 4% gold per tick in addition to it's current effects.

GROWTH and PRODUCTIVITY scales would give +/- 3% gold per tick to make them more attractive.

So at +3 ORDER, -3 Luck you would have +6% gold with rare bad events.

At +3 Luck, -3 Order you would have -6% gold with more common good luck events.

What do you think? Would you consider these scale effects more balanced than what is currently in the game? <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I already find productivity to be crucial, and I don't think it needs to be improved. Growth needs to be improved, but maybe by having it actually cause more growth... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

I don't like the ideas of the luck scale causing increased gold income, or weakening Order's gold boost. Instead, I'd like to see very high-level magic (6-10) made cheaper on pretenders to make spending points there more tempting, or graduated costs on scales (going from 0 to +3 order costing 30, 40, then 50) so that +-3 was not always the best choice.

-Cherry

P.S. Does order also cause unrest to decrease? It seems that unrest decreases faster when I choose order +3 as opposed to neutral.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Taqwus:
Incidentally, with regards to Luck, certain nations might have differing views on what's lucky or not...

As Soul Gate or Ashen Empire Ermor, for instance, I would not exactly be thrilled to get a bunch of militia, since their maintenance cost can be very bad for an already weak economy. A leader has to be rushed ASAP to send them to die. A lucky "dead Ermor" equivalent would probably be tombs opening up... <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This can be dealt with fairly easily, as a similar mechanism already exists for making sure some events won't happen unless the scales are right. For example, militia events could be marked as "not Ashen Empire, Carrion Woords, etc".

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
I don't like the ideas of the luck scale causing increased gold income, or weakening Order's gold boost. Instead, I'd like to see very high-level magic (6-10) made cheaper on pretenders to make spending points there more tempting, or graduated costs on scales (going from 0 to +3 order costing 30, 40, then 50) so that +-3 was not always the best choice.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">These changes still leave order the dominant scale... Addressing the strength of order relative to the other scales is very much the issue. How would you suggest making the other scales more viable relative to order?

Graduating the costs of scales is attractive to me however, and 30/40/50 seems reasonable.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Jasper:
How would you suggest making the other scales more viable relative to order?<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think Production is fine and Heat/Cold is fine (though morale effects would be nice). Growth is underpowered, and would be better (and more thematic) if it offered more growth, not more gold. Or maybe cheaper cavalry, since grass and horses flourish...=) No, seriously.

I see magic as weak, too. Drain is crippling, since it gives increasing detriments, while magic gives decreasing returns...

So, if you use magic-2 units as researchers, going from drain-3 to magic-3 is like this:

Scale.......Research......Design Points
-3..................1.......................+40
-2..................2.......................+40
-1..................3.......................+40
+0.................4.......................0
+1.................5.......................-40
+2.................6.......................-40
+3.................7.......................-40

...not very balanced. The move from -3 to -2 costs 40 points, but is WAY more valuable than the move from +2 to +3 which is almost worthless even with weak researchers. Now if Magic/Drain increased or decreased gem output from magic sites... yes. THAT would make it a vital scale. 10% per tick would work (and of course gem output would have to be randomized, so that a site giving 3 Earth gems, in Drain-3, would have three 70% chances of giving an earth gem each turn, averaging 2.1 gems per turn).

Alternately (or in addition), the cost could be rescaled, like this:

Scale.......Research......Design Points
-3..................1.......................+55
-2..................2.......................+50
-1..................3.......................+45
+0.................4.......................0
+1.................5.......................-45
+2.................6.......................-40
+3.................7.......................-35

Thus, the cost of Magic-3 would stay 120, but the benefit of Drain-3 would move to 150... and the previously less-tempting ends of the scale would both look more attractive.

As for making order less prone to extremes, rescaling the cost or reducing the event interference might help. +-1 Order causing -+5% event probability rather than +-10% might help, and partially decouple the luck/order link.

-Cherry

[Catquiet]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
I don't like the ideas of the luck scale causing increased gold income, or weakening Order's gold boost. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">At the moment, even with common random events, events don't happen often enough to make + Luck worthwhile. If they increased the frequency of random events or made good events a whole lot better, Dominions II would depend too much on chance. That would take away from the strategy part of the game.

The +/- gold from the LUCK scale would represent all the tiny events that affect the income of your peasants but aren't quite newsworthy. One farmer's plow horse goes lame, moths get into a silk merchant's warehouse, ect. It all adds up.

Currently ORDER has the most important scale effect in the game. Positive ORDER also reduces the good and bad effects of LUCK. Together these things make LUCK very unattractive, it needs a +/- gold bonus to make it viable.

Perhaps if Luck when adjusted at all (The Balance of All things) Event occurance increased.

So;

Luck +3 +15% Increase in Events +30 To Good Luck
Luck +2 +10% Increase in Events +20 To Good Luck
Luck +1 +5% Increase in Events +10 To Good Luck
Balance 0 - Even Luck
Luck -1 +5 Increase in Events +10 To Bad Luck
Luck -2 +10 Increase in Events +20 to Bad Luck
Luck -3 +15 Increase to Events +30 to Bad Luck


Thus if you took the Order +3, Misfortune -3 Option you would be negating half of what Order does, and be penalized by the Bad Luck. Or if you I could never see anyone take Turmoil 3, Misfortune 3 though if it was changed to this. Though maybe that is good.

I do think Magic is a weak scale as well. Perhaps there could be another added adjustment besides Magic Resistance and Research.

[Catquiet]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

I see magic as weak, too. Drain is crippling, since it gives increasing detriments, while magic gives decreasing returns...

-Cherry [/QB]<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Would you be happier if Magic gave a straight %20 percent bonus to the research pool per tick?

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Catquiet:
Would you be happier if Magic gave a straight %20 percent bonus to the research pool per tick? <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Possibly. I'd have to think about it for a while. The way it works now is more interesting, with weak mages affected more than strong mages, and the pretender rarely affected much at all... really, I think I'd prefer for the research effects to stay the same, and rebalancing of scales done more at the scale-cost level than scale-effect level. Though magic/drain affecting gem output seems logical and interesting to me.

Extra luck increasing income would be logical to help fix the system, by making +Luck/+Order suddenly a viable choice... but it makes no sense conceptually to me. Why should luck and unluck predicatably affect your income? Having them modify the chances of units gaining afflictions in lucky/unluck provinces, though... that would be interesting too. Right now the affliction chance for a hit is this: (Damage/HP). So a 20 HP unit taking 5 damage has a 25% chance of gaining an affliction. Something like (Damage*(10-Luck)/(10*HP)) would change that, so that the same situation in a -3 Luck province would give (5*(10+3)/(10*20))=32.5%, and a +3 Luck province would give a (5*(10-3)/(10*20))=17.5% of gaining an affliction.

Unluck would be a good scale for light-unit Machaka and BK Tien Chi, while Luck would be better for Ulm, Abysia, and Ermor... and everyone would be afraid to invade Unluck nations http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

-Cherry

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Zen:
Perhaps if Luck when adjusted at all (The Balance of All things) Event occurance increased.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That was the case at one time in Doms I, but I've been unable to confirm it for Doms II.

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by Zen:
Perhaps if Luck when adjusted at all (The Balance of All things) Event occurance increased.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That was the case at one time in Doms I, but I've been unable to confirm it for Doms II. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I is not in Dom II, but I'm starting to believe it should be. There is a risk of a turmoil/luck default with this setting, but the use for luck-0 is more obvious and order/misfortune-3 is less viable.

[Keir Maxwell]

I consider Militia turning up to fight for me to be a bad thing. Not only do the useless blighters make me pay for them but sometimes they turn up where my army is blowing its carefully calculated supply and causing horrible trouble. Like when I moved moved my starving veterans into a rear province to recover and the the militia turn up, eat the food, pocket your gold, and laugh at the poor diseased veterans. ^%@#!

In Dom1 I could use Militia for patroling and I still didn't like them. I sure do dislike them now. How about that event just improves the provinces defense rating significantly. That might even be useful sometimes and at least it will never be bad.

Sometimes you do get incredibly good events. Like the time I got 1000gps on the first turn with my crazy Niefelheim Ice Age race - would you like to wear that in MP? Then there was the time I got Chainmail of Deflection on the first turn and stuck it on the Prince of Death. So sometimes luck can be very good - lets not forget this in our hurry to rebalence. If you get one bandit camp every year playing luck/turmoil I wouldn't complain. Now that earthquake on the first turn I got the other day would have hurt if it had been MP.

cheers

Keir

[ November 23, 2003, 08:51: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
Having them modify the chances of units gaining afflictions in lucky/unluck provinces, though... that would be interesting too.
-Cherry <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Is it the attacker that should be lucky or the defender? Get a lucky strike and take his eye out, or get lucky and get hit in the forehead instead of the face. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Perhaps growth to avoid afflictions, luck to hit where it hurts. But these are changes that are difficult to evaluate and possibly to implement.

[Nerfix]

I don't find magic weak. If you have cheap(or cost effective) mages, you can easily get huge amounts of research points with magic. Jotunheim is a good example of this. Besides, sometimes you would give a kindom for -1 Mr when that buffed up Nataraja invades your lands...

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
I is not in Dom II, but I'm starting to believe it should be. There is a risk of a turmoil/luck default with this setting, but the use for luck-0 is more obvious and order/misfortune-3 is less viable. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ack, it's not!? No wonder luck seems worse to me than it should be, and misfortune better! This was a very thematic effect in Dom 1, and certainly wasn't overpowered.

Returning it would be a definite improvement, with IMHO no chance of unbalancing turmoil/luck. Order 3 gives 13/7 the income of Turmoil 3 -- a nearly insurmountable difference! Even were Order/Turmoil changed to 5% income change per level this would IMHO still not be a problem.

[SurvivalistMerc]

I'm going to have to disagree slightly with respect to magic. It gives decreased percentage returns and increased percentage losses with scales.

But please remember that the cost/reward for taking the scale is linear (as pointed out by someone else here). And imagine a magic-3 Ctis. With shamen doing the research. These are sacred units and have less overall cost per research point than a sage imo. Plus, they seem to have more battle utility than a sage.

To give a unit like this, with around 4 rp or so, 3 extra rp is a 75% boost overall. Not bad. I'm going to stick with those who want the drain scale left alone.

With regard to luck, what would folks say to not only good and bad random events but also neutral ones that have good and bad elements? Your luck scale could turn some bad or good events into "neutral" ones depending on what scales you took. (I see the militia as "neutral" at best. But they do make good cannon fodder and give me an excuse to make that summer sword.)

I'll acknowledge that I'm still a total newb, so my assessment of value is very preliminary here.

[mr.white]

I think the main issue here is that the event system is broken. That skews the whole view of order since it has the additional benefit of disaster-protection, which you can't get any other way. I'm not so sure that it's too good without that aspect.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
Having them modify the chances of units gaining afflictions in lucky/unluck provinces, though... that would be interesting too.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hmm, that could be interesting. But I think having it affect both sides indiscriminately might largely negate the effect</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I really like this idea, and it sure hasn't to work indiscriminately. A positive luck scale should lower your chances to get afflictions only if you're fighting in your own dominion (just like you don't benefit from your neighbor's luck wrt events). It could even go further: luck could increase the chances for the enemy to get afflictions if he's fighting in your dominion.

On the same vein, I remember someone suggested a lucky dominion should give a bit of luck to your units, as long as they remain in your dominion - like the Luck spell, but only 5%/tick instead of 50%. I thought that was a cute idea.

Also, I wouldn't call Machaka a light-unit nation. I make extensive use of spider knights and black hunters<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I could do without the spiders, I couldn't without the hoplites.

[apoger]

There have been many well thought out and excellent ideas here. Problem is that most of them are complex. It is hard to balance new complexity. Furthmore complexity is a very hard sell to Illwinter. I'm interested in seeing a fix this century.

To that end I offer the follwing thoughts.
The main issue is that dire events are -NOT FUN-. Nobody losses 10K population at the capital and thinks "Wow! I love Dominions". Secondly these events are not balanced. There is no 'population is increased by 10K' event. Gaining a cloak of displacement is sweet, but is no compenstation for the more serious dire events. These events add nothing to the game. I say a simple way to address the issue would be to *delete* them. It would only make the game better. Nobody would miss these events. Losing labs and chunks of gold is more than bad enough.

Without these catastrophic events, I suspect that Turmiol/Luck might be more balanced in respect to Order/Misfortune.

This might not be the best solution, but it is simple, and easy to implement. Often that has a 'magic' of it's own.

[Treebeard]

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:
On the same vein, I remember someone suggested a lucky dominion should give a bit of luck to your units, as long as they remain in your dominion - like the Luck spell, but only 5%/tick instead of 50%. I thought that was a cute idea.[/QB]<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You know, that's a pretty good idea. Perhaps tone it down to 3-4% per level of luck.

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by apoger:
Without these catastrophic events, I suspect that Turmiol/Luck might be more balanced in respect to Order/Misfortune.

This might not be the best solution, but it is simple, and easy to implement. Often that has a 'magic' of it's own. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This is the conculusion I have been moving towards with this debate. Nerf or remove the worst events.

Cheers

Keir

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
I see no problem with the current heat/cold, productivity/sloth or growth/death scales. Different nations, themes and strategies have good reasons to take different positions on these scales, which IMO is how it should be. I have seen and played anything from +3 to -3 and consider them all viable for the right strategy. I wish I could say that for turmoil, magic, drain and luck. Any turmoil is likely to hose you, luck isn't worth the points, high magic isn't worth the points and high drain is too crippling except for standard Ulm. [/QB]<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have been experimenting with a very wide range of designs than simply because Bless effects are new and I want to try them out.

I have taken drain 3 heaps with Dom II and will continue to do so. I consider it to be the best choice for the majority of race designs I'm looking at right now. When you have 0pts (or less) after designing your pretender you end up with some funky scales and a huge amount of research coming out of the (sometimes immobile) pretender (28 one time!) so drain 3 is one of the first negative scale choices. I would have to say though that I am having a harder time finding sage sites than I in Dom1 which is a worry.

I agree with you Chris though on the rest of the scales.

cheers

Keir

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Jasper:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
I is not in Dom II, but I'm starting to believe it should be. There is a risk of a turmoil/luck default with this setting, but the use for luck-0 is more obvious and order/misfortune-3 is less viable. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ack, it's not!? No wonder luck seems worse to me than it should be, and misfortune better! This was a very thematic effect in Dom 1, and certainly wasn't overpowered.

Returning it would be a definite improvement, with IMHO no chance of unbalancing turmoil/luck. Order 3 gives 13/7 the income of Turmoil 3 -- a nearly insurmountable difference! Even were Order/Turmoil changed to 5% income change per level this would IMHO still not be a problem. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Order/turmoil was already chagned to 7% per step in Dom II, so Order 3 gives 121/79 the income of Turmoil 3 - a huge difference, but what do you expect for 240 nation points? You can get a new path to 9 with most pretenders for that many points. Or buy 6 other positive scales (luck, growth and magic all come to mind as possibilities - at least if the current problems with luck are fixed).

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by Chris Byler:
I see no problem with the current heat/cold, productivity/sloth or growth/death scales. Different nations, themes and strategies have good reasons to take different positions on these scales, which IMO is how it should be. I have seen and played anything from +3 to -3 and consider them all viable for the right strategy. I wish I could say that for turmoil, magic, drain and luck. Any turmoil is likely to hose you, luck isn't worth the points, high magic isn't worth the points and high drain is too crippling except for standard Ulm. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have been experimenting with a very wide range of designs than simply because Bless effects are new and I want to try them out.

I have taken drain 3 heaps with Dom II and will continue to do so. I consider it to be the best choice for the majority of race designs I'm looking at right now. When you have 0pts (or less) after designing your pretender you end up with some funky scales and a huge amount of research coming out of the (sometimes immobile) pretender (28 one time!) so drain 3 is one of the first negative scale choices. I would have to say though that I am having a harder time finding sage sites than I in Dom1 which is a worry.

I agree with you Chris though on the rest of the scales.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Many cheap mages can't research at all in drain 3. I generally don't want to use my pretender as a researcher except in the first year or so, and I certainly don't want to be stuck in a situation where he is my only effective researcher ever (or I need to use celestial masters or archtheurgs to research because they are hit least by the drain scale). It's even worse if all your mages are horrendously expensive (Jotunheim except Utgard) or all your mages with decent magic are horrendously expensive (standard Pangaea - dryads can't research in strong drain).

I just had a new idea for making high magic scales more rewarding and cool; I'm going to start another thread with it since this one is supposed to be about luck/order. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
Many cheap mages can't research at all in drain 3. I generally don't want to use my pretender as a researcher except in the first year or so, and I certainly don't want to be stuck in a situation where he is my only effective researcher ever (or I need to use celestial masters or archtheurgs to research because they are hit least by the drain scale). It's even worse if all your mages are horrendously expensive (Jotunheim except Utgard) or all your mages with decent magic are horrendously expensive (standard Pangaea - dryads can't research in strong drain).

I just had a new idea for making high magic scales more rewarding and cool; I'm going to start another thread with it since this one is supposed to be about luck/order. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think starting a new thread is a good idea. Your idea's for improving magic are very interesting but would require careful balencing. I think magic is a bit weak in the early game but too powerful later.

The reason I don't care much about drain 3 is that the majority of my present batch of races work on the theory that they start with awesome magic (bless effects) which other players will not achieve anything like for ages. By the time they do hopefully you have found sages who really don't care about scales that much. As long as I can crash up the reasearch ladder later, for wards etc, through mass input of gold the weaker starting scale is ok. My pretender can hit the few improtant early targets. Getting to con 4 for summer lions/fallbears etc is not a big deal anymore while starting with blessed monstrosities is pretty impressive - still its early days yet so its all preliminary assessments for now.

Ciao

Keir

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Catquiet:
Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't like the ideas of the luck scale causing increased gold income, or weakening Order's gold boost. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">At the moment, even with common random events, events don't happen often enough to make + Luck worthwhile. If they increased the frequency of random events or made good events a whole lot better, Dominions II would depend too much on chance. That would take away from the strategy part of the game.

The +/- gold from the LUCK scale would represent all the tiny events that affect the income of your peasants but aren't quite newsworthy. One farmer's plow horse goes lame, moths get into a silk merchant's warehouse, ect. It all adds up.

Currently ORDER has the most important scale effect in the game. Positive ORDER also reduces the good and bad effects of LUCK. Together these things make LUCK very unattractive, it needs a +/- gold bonus to make it viable. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">On the contrary, events happen quite often. The reason luck isn't attractive is that events aren't consistently positive even with strong luck, and the few crippling events (e.g. flood in home province - although I've seen it in the first year, it is crippling anytime; banning it from the first X turns wouldn't help enough) far outweigh the handful of extra gems or free militia.

That, and order is too valuable for its gold boost. Change it to +/-5% gold, +/-5% events, and make some of the worst events misfortune-only, and I think you'd go a long way toward fixing the order/luck problems.

Magic is another issue - as Saber points out, high levels of drain produce proportionally more decrease in research while high levels of magic produce proportionally less increase.

I'd like to see one or more of the following:
* more gems per site in magic (including home sites) - as Saber proposed
* reduced empowerment cost in magic (+/-10% per scale? Empowerment is pretty rare so you need a big effect to be noticeable)
* reduced ritual/forge cost in magic (+/-5% per scale? Ulm Smiths immune to drain for forging, perhaps not for rituals.)

obviously with the opposite effects in drain.

High levels of magic should make you a magical powerhouse, which currently they don't really - the dominant factor is your gem/slave income, which depends mostly on how many provinces you control and what mages you have available to search them. Research plays a part but not that big a part - and high magic levels don't help research that much anyway.

If magic scale influences gem income, it should influence blood hunting as well. Give Abysia somewhere to put all those points. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Of course if the cost reduction approach is taken instead, it would already affect blood magic just like other paths.

I see no problem with the current heat/cold, productivity/sloth or growth/death scales. Different nations, themes and strategies have good reasons to take different positions on these scales, which IMO is how it should be. I have seen and played anything from +3 to -3 and consider them all viable for the right strategy. I wish I could say that for turmoil, magic, drain and luck. Any turmoil is likely to hose you, luck isn't worth the points, high magic isn't worth the points and high drain is too crippling except for standard Ulm.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by Catquiet:
Would you be happier if Magic gave a straight %20 percent bonus to the research pool per tick? <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Possibly. I'd have to think about it for a while. The way it works now is more interesting, with weak mages affected more than strong mages, and the pretender rarely affected much at all... really, I think I'd prefer for the research effects to stay the same, and rebalancing of scales done more at the scale-cost level than scale-effect level. Though magic/drain affecting gem output seems logical and interesting to me.

</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Although I usually agree with you, I don't want to see scale costs changed. 40 points per scale, for all scales, at all levels, is one of the few simple and easy to understand mechanics in Dom II, and I don't want to see it go away.

I'd rather see the scale effects become nOnlinear (if they have to) than the costs.

What would you say to +1/+2/+4 rp for magic, and -1/-1/-2 for drain? (keeping in mind that the MR effects happen at +/-2).


Extra luck increasing income would be logical to help fix the system, by making +Luck/+Order suddenly a viable choice... but it makes no sense conceptually to me. Why should luck and unluck predicatably affect your income?

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">They shouldn't predictably do so (in my opinion). Instead they should unpredictably do so. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with the event system - but really bad events should be much more rare in luck scales, or not be allowed at all. Currently turmoil/luck is not viable, and order/unluck is too good, primarily because luck doesn't provide enough protection from game-losing events, and good events don't provide enough benefit to offset the very bad events.

Having them modify the chances of units gaining afflictions in lucky/unluck provinces, though... that would be interesting too. Right now the affliction chance for a hit is this: (Damage/HP). So a 20 HP unit taking 5 damage has a 25% chance of gaining an affliction. Something like (Damage*(10-Luck)/(10*HP)) would change that, so that the same situation in a -3 Luck province would give (5*(10+3)/(10*20))=32.5%, and a +3 Luck province would give a (5*(10-3)/(10*20))=17.5% of gaining an affliction.

Unluck would be a good scale for light-unit Machaka and BK Tien Chi, while Luck would be better for Ulm, Abysia, and Ermor... and everyone would be afraid to invade Unluck nations http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

-Cherry <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hmm, that could be interesting. But I think having it affect both sides indiscriminately might largely negate the effect (at least, if you want to make it something that adds to the benefits of luck and the pains of unluck).

Also, I wouldn't call Machaka a light-unit nation. I make extensive use of spider knights and black hunters, both of which are heavy units that I would hate to see get extra afflictions. (Nature-9 is pretty awesome for black hunters...)

[NTJedi]

I suggest making ORDER less effective with its current bonuses.

This would also be a quick solution... instead of trying to change all the others as well.

After almost 300 turns of tests (common events), it seems to me that the frequency of "disastrous" events should be balanced. A disaster means big (thus irreparable) loss of pop : floods, restless people, plagues, famines, etc, I'm not counting the minor events like hailstorms, or the provinces lost to rebels, knights, etc

To sum up :
- Order 0 & Luck 0 = 36 events in 82 turns. 20 good events (I've been lucky) but 5 disasters.
- Order-3 & Luck +3 = 88 events in 82 turns. 61 good events (including the 1500 gold, for a total of 3245 gp bonuses). But still 7 big disasters!
- Order+3 & Luck-3 = 6 events in 123 turns. Only minor effects.

Is that logical to get *more* disasters with max luck ? IMHO Illwinter should limit the frequency of those major events, something like 2 possible disasters with Luck+1, 1 with Luck+2 et 0 with Luck+3. As it is, the Luck/Disorder combo seems a poor choice (on average, 40 gp/turn dont compensate for disasters and 30% tax losses).
Cheers

[ November 25, 2003, 08:05: Message edited by: Sunray_be ]

[ywl]

Originally posted by apoger:
There have been many well thought out and excellent ideas here. Problem is that most of them are complex. It is hard to balance new complexity. Furthmore complexity is a very hard sell to Illwinter. I'm interested in seeing a fix this century.

To that end I offer the follwing thoughts.
The main issue is that dire events are -NOT FUN-. Nobody losses 10K population at the capital and thinks "Wow! I love Dominions". Secondly these events are not balanced. There is no 'population is increased by 10K' event. Gaining a cloak of displacement is sweet, but is no compenstation for the more serious dire events. These events add nothing to the game. I say a simple way to address the issue would be to *delete* them. It would only make the game better. Nobody would miss these events. Losing labs and chunks of gold is more than bad enough.

Without these catastrophic events, I suspect that Turmiol/Luck might be more balanced in respect to Order/Misfortune.

This might not be the best solution, but it is simple, and easy to implement. Often that has a 'magic' of it's own. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It's a very good idea. However, one side-feature of the major random events is to disguise those province-hitting spells. Though it's one feature that we could live without.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Sunray_be:
After almost 300 turns of tests...

To sum up :
- Order 0 & Luck 0 = 36 events in 82 turns. 20 good events (I've been lucky) but 5 disasters.
- Order-3 & Luck +3 = 88 events in 82 turns. 61 good events (including the 1500 gold, for a total of 3245 gp bonuses). But still 7 big disasters!
- Order+3 & Luck-3 = 6 events in 123 turns. Only minor effects.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Thanks for running the tests! Normally, 1 test per scale wouldn't really be statistically valid, but in this case the vastness of those difference is enough to draw firm conclusions. First, they indicate (to me) that not only is something majorly unbalanced, but also that my understanding of the way luck and order affect event frequencies is wrong. Those results are like 5 orders of magnitude away from my predictions, and it almost seems like Unluck is causing fewer events, and Luck is causing more events. If you are up for more tests, I'd suggest Order 0 & Luck +3, and Order 0 & Luck -3, to see if the base event frequency changes. I'd do it but I'm lazy.

-Cherry

[SurvivalistMerc]

ywl,

I agree...I could also do without the disasters designed to disquise those province-harming spells.

NTJedi,

I would like to leave ORDER alone and fix the problem by truly balancing the events. Fixing the events is just as easy as changing the order scale. Or so it would seem to me.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
I agree...I could also do without the disasters designed to disquise those province-harming spells.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ah, that's right. Sunray_be, some of your work might be in vain if it is impossible to discriminate between real and fake disasters. Some, like knights, vinemen, and earthquakes are always luck... but others, like floods, are also major and cannot be distinguished.

[HJ]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
I agree...I could also do without the disasters designed to disquise those province-harming spells.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ah, that's right. Sunray_be, some of your work might be in vain if it is impossible to discriminate between real and fake disasters. Some, like knights, vinemen, and earthquakes are always luck... but others, like floods, are also major and cannot be distinguished. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Not if you play all the races at the same time through hotseat. The only thing you have to remember then is how many spells did you cast yourself. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
[QB] ywl,

I agree...I could also do without the disasters designed to disquise those province-harming spells.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Then you would know that someone was out to get you though, which isn't necessarily a good thing. It removes a lot of the espionage aspect.

[Pocus]

Originally posted by Sunray_be:
After almost 300 turns of tests (common events), it seems to me that the frequency of "disastrous" events should be balanced. A disaster means big (thus irreparable) loss of pop : floods, restless people, plagues, famines, etc, I'm not counting the minor events like hailstorms, or the provinces lost to rebels, knights, etc

To sum up :
- Order 0 & Luck 0 = 36 events in 82 turns. 20 good events (I've been lucky) but 5 disasters.
- Order-3 & Luck +3 = 88 events in 82 turns. 61 good events (including the 1500 gold, for a total of 3245 gp bonuses). But still 7 big disasters!
- Order+3 & Luck-3 = 6 events in 123 turns. Only minor effects.

Is that logical to get *more* disasters with max luck ? IMHO Illwinter should limit the frequency of those major events, something like 2 possible disasters with Luck+1, 1 with Luck+2 et 0 with Luck+3. As it is, the Luck/Disorder combo seems a poor choice (on average, 40 gp/turn dont compensate for disasters and 30% tax losses).
Cheers <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">how many provinces did you control for the tests? I think you should own at least 10 so to get the max number of possibles events coming. This can change the whole thing if you get 150 events in 75 turns compared to one a turn roughly (but 20% will be bad anyway - which is too much)

[Sammual]

I would like to see the Disasters toned down a bit for every level of Luck you have.

Sammual

Originally posted by Pocus:
how many provinces did you control for the tests? I think you should own at least 10 so to get the max number of possibles events coming. This can change the whole thing if you get 150 events in 75 turns compared to one a turn roughly (but 20% will be bad anyway - which is too much) <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I was playing hotseat, only Ulm vs Pythium (to avoid heat/cold effects). I opened only the Ulm turns, so Pythium was totally passive. No spells, no fake disasters...
The test was based on 10 provinces indeed (turn 1 = capital, turn 2 = 4 provinces, turn 3 = 8 provinces, turn 4 = 10 provinces). I've *never* seen more than 2 events/t. BTW.
Dominion was 10 candles to maximize its influence.
By "disaster" I mean big pop loss, no knights, no revolt, not event hailstorms.
To be perfect (I realized too late) I should have made a scenario to remove all magic sites. It is not impossible that one of the test was distorted by a Doom Cloud or something like that...
Could someone confirm/invalidate my tests ?

Cheers

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
If you are up for more tests, I'd suggest Order 0 & Luck +3, and Order 0 & Luck -3, to see if the base event frequency changes. I'd do it but I'm lazy.<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Did it:
Order 0 and Luck +3 = 43 events / 80 turns, 9 bad (1 flood) and 34 good events (1500 gold event among others).
Order +3 and Luck 0 = 8 events / 80 turns, 3 bad (still 1 flood !) and 5 good (1 hero even with luck 0).
Any thought ?

The #'s are within the formula's we were given; which is nice to know. It is just the fact of the good events weighing in less than the bad events.

I don't mind 20% Loss of Population event if on the good side I could get a 10% increase.

Did one Last test, as suggested :
Order O and Luck -3 = 39 events / 82 turns, 28 bad events (6 disasters) and still 11 good events.

[Truper]

Hmmm. Order 0 and luck +3. Nearly 4 times as many good events as bad, 1 disaster and one joyous windfall...

Seems viable to me. The 21% less gold on a turn to turn basis will be somewhat painful, but I'd guess largely compensated by the good events. Perhaps there's hope for me in that MP game after all...

[Treebeard]

One of the best things of the luck scale is the chance of getting mines. If you start in a mountain or get some mountain terrain quick, chances are good you'll start to discover new mines pretty quick. In one game I found three in my home province in 20 turns.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Sunray_be:
Order 0 and Luck +3 = 43 events / 80 turns, 9 bad (1 flood) and 34 good events (1500 gold event among others).
Order +3 and Luck 0 = 8 events / 80 turns, 3 bad (still 1 flood !) and 5 good (1 hero even with luck 0).
Any thought ? <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes. Order does NOT reduce event frequency by 10% per level, assuming this test is representative. More like 25% per level, which makes it even more valuable than previously thought. I think I'll always go with +3 order now. Thanks for all your effort!

-Cherry

P.S. In 0%-5% magic site games, luck is very valuable, as the main source of non-national gems. But otherwise... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

[Pocus]

Awesome work Sunray, we can draw some probabilities from what you have done.


To sum up :
- Order 0 & Luck 0 = 36 events in 82 turns. 20 good events (I've been lucky) but 5 disasters.
- Order-3 & Luck +3 = 88 events in 82 turns. 61 good events (including the 1500 gold, for a total of 3245 gp bonuses). But still 7 big disasters!
- Order+3 & Luck-3 = 6 events in 123 turns. Only minor effects.

Did it:
Order 0 and Luck +3 = 43 events / 80 turns, 9 bad (1 flood) and 34 good events (1500 gold event among others).
Order +3 and Luck 0 = 8 events / 80 turns, 3 bad (still 1 flood !) and 5 good (1 hero even with luck 0).
Any thought ?

Order O and Luck -3 = 39 events / 82 turns, 28 bad events (6 disasters) and still 11 good events.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">what we knows from IW : probability of good event at luck 0 : 50%. Adjustment from luck : +-10%

what we deduce from your tests :

probability of drawing an event (max 2) at order 0 : 50%
probability of drawing an event at order 3 : 10%

=> I would say that order modify event probability by +- 13% - 15%

Taking your figures, and computing the theorical numbers now that would give:

order 0 : 36 events / 82 turns
theorically would give 41 events, not far.

order -3 : 88 events events / 82 turns
theorically would give 82 events, not far.

order 3 : 6 events / 123 turns
theorically would give 6 events, perfect fit!
etc.

Common Race designs :

In order we believe :
with Order 3 Luck -3 you have 5% chance of getting an event, with 80% of it being bad.

Lady Luck:
With Order -3 Luck +3, you have one event a turn in average, with 80% of being good.

On the safe side:
With Order 0 Luck +1, you have 50% of having an event, with 60% chances of it being good. (People generally takes that for national heroes too).

[Treebeard]

I think order/turmoil change the probability of events too much. Perhaps having it match luck scale (i.e. 10% per level) would level order 3/unluck 3 and turmoil 3/luck 3.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Treebeard:
I think order/turmoil change the probability of events too much. Perhaps having it match luck scale (i.e. 10% per level) would level order 3/unluck 3 and turmoil 3/luck 3. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yeah... with a weak gold economy, order 3 is very desirable... and with that, there are barely any events, so blowing points on luck is crazy.

-Cherry

[ November 27, 2003, 17:40: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[ywl]

Another person has proposed this before but I can't find who he is http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .

I think over it the other day and find giving Luck a small income bonus/penalty may also help. The appropriate number should be somewhat similar or slightly less than growth, e.g. +/-2%.

It's not unrealistic - luck help making money. People can still use Order +3/Luck -3. But with the income bonus/penalty acting against each other, it's a self-defeating setting. I have no problem with Order +3/Luck 0 as you have to spend points to get the bonus.

[Gandalf Parker]

It seems to me that Order-3/Luck+3 becomes viable in fast games on small maps. Possibly even average ones. One of the "tester minded" people who have longer attention spans than I do might want to do a run on this. How do the many good-luck events provide in comparison to high-order taxation?

Actually in my testing of all things "stupid to choose" Ive actually had abit of fun with "stupid" scale settings. For insteance, some races can benefit greatly from the many blessings achievable by taking all -3 scales. Many blessings as in having 4 in every magic (sometimes 5 in each) with one magic at 9 or 10. I started testing this thinking Id have to be take really low dominion power and plan to pretty much abandon the capital province by turn 10 (when most events kick in) but so far it hasnt been all that bad. With some thinking and nations its quite a useable tactic.

[Saber Cherry]

Yeah, I forgot, but that's true too... luck+3 is not very useful on huge maps, since the number of events per turn is capped (at 3, right?) no matter how many provinces you own, while income/magic sites increase linearly with province ownership. If events also increased linearly with province ownership - and I see no reason why that should not be the case - luck scale would become more important.

The more I think about it, though, the more I think order should stop affecting the probability of events, or affect it way less (5% per tick, instead of seemingly 25% per tick). Then you could set order and luck independantly, and choose settings other than 3 order, -3 luck or -3 order, 3 luck. Also, luck/unluck scales increasing events would be nice.

[Kristoffer O]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
Yeah, I forgot, but that's true too... luck+3 is not very useful on huge maps, since the number of events per turn is capped (at 3, right?) no matter how many provinces you own, while income/magic sites increase linearly with province ownership. If events also increased linearly with province ownership - and I see no reason why that should not be the case - luck scale would become more important.

The more I think about it, though, the more I think order should stop affecting the probability of events, or affect it way less (5% per tick, instead of seemingly 25% per tick). Then you could set order and luck independantly, and choose settings other than 3 order, -3 luck or -3 order, 3 luck. Also, luck/unluck scales increasing events would be nice. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If events increased linearly you would drown in events. Events would then be commonplace and more annoying. Your suggestion would not make events more important, just change the importance over time. Now events are important initially, perhaps too much so.

Also: The chance of a second and third event is dependent on the number of provinces you own.