The most dreadful (random) event?

[konming]

The most dreadful event for me is magic waning event. I lost several hundred gems to this event in a SP game.

What's your most feared random event?

[DonCorazon]

This isn't the most dreadful but was pretty ironic:

I was playing MA Pyth and just engineered a big trade to get a lot of blood slaves, hoping to empower a Theurg (dastardly I know) and get a blood economy going. I immediately had two events in a row where daring raiders broke into my dungeons and freed my blood slaves.

It was one of those Dom 3 moments that despite the pain makes you smile. My evil plans to corrupt the holy empire were thwarted by bold adventurers.

[Ironhawk]

Plague - Specifically when it occurs in your capital.

My favorite "bad" event, on the other hand, is Bogus. <3 Bogus

[ano]

To prevent valuable gem (and especially slaves for non-blood nations) loss events I try to give them to commanders until I need them.
Plague is a real disaster. OTOH it may be quite good if it is late stage and not valuable low-pop province. It generates so many corpses that you can easily raise legions of cannon fodder with Carrion Reanimation.

[Aezeal]

Well getting an event that gives 50 unrest in your capitol on turn one is pretty annoying in MP .. your econ will be effectively crippled more than anything else since it's in your only high income province.. and at the worst possible time

[Jazzepi]

I would fear getting that event that raises a bunch of manikins and completely wipes out the population of a province, in my home province.

Jazzepi

[HoneyBadger]

Losing my Temple in the first year is definitely the worst for me.

[ano]

What about losing your lab? ;)
There're many bad, bad events...

[ano]

I would fear getting that event that raises a bunch of manikins and completely wipes out the population of a province, in my home province.

Jazzepi
Never met such one. Maybe it is nations specific?

[HoneyBadger]

Lab isn't as cataclysmic, in my opinion. Very bad, but not the "most dreadful event". More expensive to replace, ofcourse, and maybe harder to fix since you can't alchemize gems to pay for a new lab, but not having a Lab won't kill you outright-where not having a Temple can and often will, if you're playing Mictlan for instance, or a low Dominion Pretender next to a high one.

[Edi]

I would fear getting that event that raises a bunch of manikins and completely wipes out the population of a province, in my home province.

Jazzepi
Never met such one. Maybe it is nations specific?
No, it's not nation specific, but it's a rare event. Infor Vadul the Ancient Presence and his horde of manikins and mandragora wipe out something on the order of 75-90% of province pop and then attack it.

That one is the absolute worst, followed by plague events. Also a bit nation dependent, Gath has a temple cost of 800, so when they get the earthquake, that's a rather non-trivial loss. Many events are somewhat dependent on what stage of the game they happen, but the plague and manikin events are never good.

[Kristoffer O]

The Ancient presence has high growth and magic scale requirements IIRC. Possibly forest as well, but I'm uncertain on that one.

I think I would be smilingly furious if I got the Skögu-Kirke event :)

[Foodstamp]

I dread the event that gives me 453470 militia ;). It cripples your economy and can be a pain to dispose of them all. Fortunately Dwarf Fortress has taught me how to kill unwanted refugees in the most creative of manners.

[Herode]

:D

BTW, the most feared event for my own is a feared events
In one game (LA), I had a continued serie of "population goes elsewhere" / brigands / "you've got a f..king plague man what a bad luck aint'it ?" on my capitol. Between turn 20 and turn 30, my beloved capitol raised < 14000 pop.

And I have Luck 1 / Growth 1 as pretender scales.

In other words : pop killing events on capitol now just drive me instantly mad :sick::hurt::doh::(:D:banghead:horse:

[HoneyBadger]

As much as I love ridiculously high Blesses, I won't play a game with negative Luck-the bad luck events are ridiculous and can easily cripple a nation if you expand slowly-which I tend to do.

[Rytek]

I dunno. Having Bogus and party drop in on the same province your rainbow god is sight searching and you forgot to give him "retreat orders" is pretty bad news. Or,having "retreat orders" on your rainbow god and getting hit with a random assassin or ninja attempt.

[Ballbarian]

The Ancient presence has high growth and magic scale requirements IIRC. Possibly forest as well, but I'm uncertain on that one.

I think I would be smilingly furious if I got the Skögu-Kirke event :)

I have missed this one. What is the Skögu-Kirke event?
I gather from google that it may be tied to Sauromatian heroes?

[Jazzepi]

I dunno. Having Bogus and party drop in on the same province your rainbow god is sight searching and you forgot to give him "retreat orders" is pretty bad news. Or,having "retreat orders" on your rainbow god and getting hit with a random assassin or ninja attempt.

I have a better one for you.

I was attacking with my Cylcops god into some random unknown territory, with one free space behind him. He defeated the indies and then got into a fist-fight with a bunch of bless Abysians. You know, the ones dual wielding flails? Nasty stuff. He retreated without any afflictions, but on the same turn, the troll and his merry band attacked the province directly behind him, cutting off his retreat route :(

Jazzepi

[Poopsi]

"Suddenly an arrow came out of the sky and pierced The Fountain of Blood through the heart. He died instantly".

This one made me angry. (WTF? how can an arrow kill a statue???)

[Dragar]

Clearly your fountain was far too brittle, I'd recommend going with one of the metallic options rather than stone. Just make sure it won't corrode in blood - stick away from iron or low grade stainless

[Jarkko]

Well, a while ago got hit by Kraken King suddenly appearing in my capital. With 25 (IIRC) Kraken. With me having Luck 3.

I didn't know there even where Kraken Kings :o Looking at the horde of Krakens (with that dreadful Kraken King leading them) I gave up that MP after considering things for a few moments (game was in the early stages stil, my capital was still my only fortress...).

[konming]

If you are playing EA R'lyeh, you just got yourself a bunch of free Kraken bodyguards. ;)

[Rytek]

"Suddenly an arrow came out of the sky and pierced The Fountain of Blood through the heart. He died instantly".

This one made me angry. (WTF? how can an arrow kill a statue???)


Sorry to tell you. That one is not a random event. Enemy is casting spells at you.

[Poopsi]

I know. I think I know which of my enemies did it too. I´m sending a horror to Caelum for kicks.

[Deadnature]

In one SP game I had a vampire count attack my capitol with his minions on turn 2, right after my starting army was badly mauled by a group of indie-barbarians. So I was unable to lift the siege on my capitol and had very little income/resources to raise a new (indie) army. Even though I was playing the AI, it was pretty much game over.

[NTJedi]

Bogus freeing blood slaves and the master theif stealing gems are some scary ones, probably not the worst, but definitely painful.

"Suddenly an arrow came out of the sky and pierced The Fountain of Blood through the heart. He died instantly".

This one made me angry. (WTF? how can an arrow kill a statue???)

I'm also surprised the fountains only have 10 hitpoints and are size SIX. They must be made of glass.

[Edi]

The Ancient presence has high growth and magic scale requirements IIRC. Possibly forest as well, but I'm uncertain on that one.

I think I would be smilingly furious if I got the Skögu-Kirke event :)

I have missed this one. What is the Skögu-Kirke event?
I gather from google that it may be tied to Sauromatian heroes?
Read their descriptions and take a wild guess. :)

Kirke is the one who seduced Skögu, then kicked him out later, so if they happen into the same province and the event happens, one of them dies. I don't know which one as I haven't seen the event in question, but I expect Skögu kills Kirke.

[Olive]

Plague - Specifically when it occurs in your capital.


Got this one at first turn of my first dom3 mp game. :doh:

[chrispedersen]

Not true honey. Losing a lab first turn, with an imprisoned pretender, and no mage build is a disaster, especially for nations that *have* to build commanders that require the lab.

I really think that some events should not occur in the first 3 turns. Sure, I realize that people take bad luck - but... you go to a lot of effort to setup a game - and then someone drops due to getting truly horrendous random events in the first turn.

There are just 5-6 events that shouldn't happen in the first year.

[chrispedersen]

Bogus freeing blood slaves and the master theif stealing gems are some scary ones, probably not the worst, but definitely painful.

"Suddenly an arrow came out of the sky and pierced The Fountain of Blood through the heart. He died instantly".

This one made me angry. (WTF? how can an arrow kill a statue???)

I'm also surprised the fountains only have 10 hitpoints and are size SIX. They must be made of glass.

How about hydras... size SIX with SIZE hit points. Just ridiculous. And to think it took hercules to kill them.

Whereas, from memomory in Dom 2, they had what.. 60 hp?

Overall, I still prefer Dom 2 I think. Liked themes.

[konming]

Hydra has 6 hit points for each of its lesser heads, and the greater head has 40. That's 8*6=48+40=88 HP. What's more important, no matter how much damage you do, you can only kill one head per attack. So they laugh off soul slay, or single attack SCs.

[lch]

I dread the event that gives me 453470 militia ;). It cripples your economy and can be a pain to dispose of them all.
+1

Especially when they appear in some backwater province of yours, and you need to start doing to micro to scuttle them away to the front line over half a year, where they're basically disposable cannon fodder, anyway. That sucks away at you income all the time. It has improved a bit with the recent nation-specific militia events, though.

It's nasty having if a vampire lord decides to take over your capital in the very early game. Another unfortunate thing is when something "gives" you a new magic site like "Deep Cavern" or what it was called or Silver/Gold mines, but overwrites a far better magic site - I think that it can do that, yes?

[konming]

Yeah, I remember in one game, a guy's capital was attacked by a bunch of knights on turn 1. He lost all his starting army (they were on patrol) + PD. He cannot recruit, has no army to fight and cannot really do much research. That's tragic.

[Endoperez]

Whereas, from memomory in Dom 2, they had what.. 60 hp?

Overall, I still prefer Dom 2 I think. Liked themes.


Actually, Oracle has just 10 hp in DomII. They weren't changed.

[Archonsod]

"A tribal chief has donated some gold and a magic item to the awakening god."

In this particular game this happened around eight times, and each time said magic item was a slave collar. I don't know who this particular tribal chief was, but his nefarious plans to overthrow my Divine, Just and Righteous rule would not go unpunished!

[archaeolept]

In one of the Mega games, where I took over Aezeal's Shinuyama, my first conflict was with a rather weak helheim... when I got to his cap, it was besieged by the Ancient Presence :)

he had luck 3 as well, heh

sucked, since it didn't bring me any income once i took it.

In a blitz recently i tried a heavy Van bless... took death and misfortune. My capital has 11k population by turn 4 or 5 ;p

[Edi]

I dread the event that gives me 453470 militia ;). It cripples your economy and can be a pain to dispose of them all.
+1

Especially when they appear in some backwater province of yours, and you need to start doing to micro to scuttle them away to the front line over half a year, where they're basically disposable cannon fodder, anyway. That sucks away at you income all the time. It has improved a bit with the recent nation-specific militia events, though.

It's nasty having if a vampire lord decides to take over your capital in the very early game. Another unfortunate thing is when something "gives" you a new magic site like "Deep Cavern" or what it was called or Silver/Gold mines, but overwrites a far better magic site - I think that it can do that, yes?
Shouldn't be able to overwrite magic sites. Those events can only happen in provinces that do not have the full four sites already.

[Ironhawk]

I really think that some events should not occur in the first 3 turns. Sure, I realize that people take bad luck - but... you go to a lot of effort to setup a game - and then someone drops due to getting truly horrendous random events in the first turn.

There are just 5-6 events that shouldn't happen in the first year.

No, I strongly disagree. If you take misfortune, you have to do it with the understanding that you are rolling the dice with your entire nation. Preventing the really bad events in the first year would make taking Misfortune practically a no-brainer since it extremely rapidly becomes less of a problem as your empire expands.

[Kristoffer O]

Most crippling events has a (reversed) turn limit of 3, 5 or 7 turns. Temple destruction might be 3, barbarian hordes etc are probably 5. THis has been updated a bit since 3.01, so if you have gotten an unfortunate crippling event on your first turn (plague or attacks) it should have been early on.

Most events are not restricted by luck/misfortune. The ancient precense is no more connected with misfortune uncommon than other bad rare events. Bad events do happen in lucky lands, just more rarely. It is as I said only Growth and Magic that restricts this event. So if you want to avoid the ancient precense you should avoid a magic growth scale altogether.


"Having waited for hundreds of years, Skögu was finally approached by his former
lover. Filled with rage and lust and hunger, he slew her, ate her and mourned her by
killing ten percent of the population."

[HoneyBadger]

It would be fun if you had a Lernean Hydra hero that, once you were reduced to the last head, it started growing extra heads (like in the Hercules legend). So you'd go from 9 to 1, and then from 1 to 9 :)

[Aezeal]

Well KO I think you should also remove teh events that give 30-50 unrest, halving income from the early turns till like turn 3-5

[Zeldor]

Ironhawk:

The bad things are comboes of bad events, like 120 unrest in capitol on turn2... that can really make you lose a game. I don't think Luck scale is good enough at preventing bad events, especially if you expand.

[Edratman]

I like the unpredicatability of bad events. It is one of the aspects that seperates Dom3 from the pack. I may hate getting one, but there is always "Start New game".

I also like that it can happen with any luck scale, but is much more probable with bad luck. There should be a penalty for choosing bad luck scales, just as there are penalties for sloth, death, etc. Otherwise bad luck would just be free points. Additionally, the possibility of getting a bad event with positive luck scales mimics life in some small peverse manner.

[Ballbarian]

"Having waited for hundreds of years, Skögu was finally approached by his former
lover. Filled with rage and lust and hunger, he slew her, ate her and mourned her by
killing ten percent of the population."

Oh that is a beautiful and nasty event. Too cool. :cool:

[Agema]

A ruinous event hitting your capital early in SP is no big deal as you can restart.

In MP, it kills a lot of time spent organising the game and the player then has to sign up and go through the fuss for a new one. Also, it potentially unbalances the game as neighbours get additional territory to move into and the first one to the wrecked player probably an early second capital. Banning events on the first 5 turns to prevent this sort of thing could be a solution as players should have a few provinces to survive a crisis by then. But I don't know it's big enough a problem to be worth the effort.

[sum1lost]

A ruinous event hitting your capital early in SP is no big deal as you can restart.

In MP, it kills a lot of time spent organising the game and the player then has to sign up and go through the fuss for a new one. Also, it potentially unbalances the game as neighbours get additional territory to move into and the first one to the wrecked player probably an early second capital. Banning events on the first 5 turns to prevent this sort of thing could be a solution as players should have a few provinces to survive a crisis by then. But I don't know it's big enough a problem to be worth the effort.

This insanely nerfs GOOD luck scales.

[Agema]

It nerfs good scales, but in my view not "insanely", or even to a large degree. Whatever, I doubt anyone's going to alter the game so it happens so it's really just pointless conjecture.

[konming]

90% of people in MP choose misfortune over luck. So preventing bad event in the first 3-5 turns is already beating dead horses. One unrest reduces your income in the first year by about 10%, still much better than taking turmoil/luck.

However, to encourage people taking luck, I would like to see that with luck domain, you are guaranteed no bad event in capital for 4*luck scale turns.

[Loren]

Not true honey. Losing a lab first turn, with an imprisoned pretender, and no mage build is a disaster, especially for nations that *have* to build commanders that require the lab.

I really think that some events should not occur in the first 3 turns. Sure, I realize that people take bad luck - but... you go to a lot of effort to setup a game - and then someone drops due to getting truly horrendous random events in the first turn.

There are just 5-6 events that shouldn't happen in the first year.

I think what's needed is most bad events shouldn't be able to happen in the capital, period.

[konming]

Not true honey. Losing a lab first turn, with an imprisoned pretender, and no mage build is a disaster, especially for nations that *have* to build commanders that require the lab.

I really think that some events should not occur in the first 3 turns. Sure, I realize that people take bad luck - but... you go to a lot of effort to setup a game - and then someone drops due to getting truly horrendous random events in the first turn.

There are just 5-6 events that shouldn't happen in the first year.

I think what's needed is most bad events shouldn't be able to happen in the capital, period.

Misfortune is already good for points, basically every guide you read out there points to misfortune. I do not see how removing one thing misfortune can possibly harm will help balance the game, or do anything else useful.

[konming]

Luck needs serious boost. In two MP games I played, with Turmoil 3 and Luck 3, I get more bad events than good. You regularly lose 20% population even with the ridiculously good luck, and generally all other bad events you can think of. Sure, barbarians won't show up, but knights and stuff still do.

To actually balance luck, I would propose the following changes:

For each province (generate events ; add to currenteventlist; )
Sort currenteventlist according to desirability of events;
If Luck(n) then discard (n*13%) lower part from currenteventlist;
Else if Misfortune(n) then discard (n*13%) upper part from currenteventlist;
If numberofevents>4 then choose 4 randomly;

[DonCorazon]

I am in 2 games with Luck scales. In the CBM game, it has been very helpful. In the non-CBM, horrible - in fact, I have probably had more bad events than good.

[Ironhawk]

Most crippling events has a (reversed) turn limit of 3, 5 or 7 turns. Temple destruction might be 3, barbarian hordes etc are probably 5. THis has been updated a bit since 3.01, so if you have gotten an unfortunate crippling event on your first turn (plague or attacks) it should have been early on.


Wow, are you serious, KO? Cause if this is the case Misf-3 just became the new point mine...

[JimMorrison]

Most crippling events has a (reversed) turn limit of 3, 5 or 7 turns. Temple destruction might be 3, barbarian hordes etc are probably 5. THis has been updated a bit since 3.01, so if you have gotten an unfortunate crippling event on your first turn (plague or attacks) it should have been early on.


Wow, are you serious, KO? Cause if this is the case Misf-3 just became the new point mine...


Yes, you take Misf 3 and tell me how it goes. :p

I ended up with Misf 3 in one game (still not sure how I decided to do that), and it has been a non-stop headache.

[Rytek]

Jazzepei:
At the risk of giving a little info from our current game.:

I find it soooo ironic we were posting in this thread and you had your H4 prophet gang raped by Barbarians this turn.

I had a 450g capitol only sight searching mage with "retreat" orders attacked by an indep ninja this round as well!! Damn did that really tick me off! I swear I brought it on myself by posting in this post.

[Jazzepi]

Jazzepei:
At the risk of giving a little info from our current game.:

I find it soooo ironic we were posting in this thread and you had your H4 prophet gang raped by Barbarians this turn.

I had a 450g capitol only sight searching mage with "retreat" orders attacked by an indep ninja this round as well!! Damn did that really tick me off! I swear I brought it on myself by posting in this post.

Haha.

Yeah I should have put him on retreat. I wasn't even thinking about that at all D:

So random. He was my prophet too :(

Jazzepi

[Herode]

Luck needs serious boost. In two MP games I played, with Turmoil 3 and Luck 3, I get more bad events than good.
Maybe you were really unlucky. I tried luck as well as unluck scales, I found them balanced in terms of results. Even with positive luck bad events happen, and even with negative luck god events happen. Also, don't forget that there are many other events that pop loss. If you really think you're getting unbalanced events, and I had that feeling by my own in some games, try this :

- first of all, you'll note that the feeling of unbalanced events always concerns unbalanced bad events Nobody ever complained for excessive good events ;)

- second, if you save your turns in an history folder (I do it for my MP games), just go through your history again and carefully check the events one by one. In my case, what I eventually found is in no way amazing : the "unbalanced bad events" were just an imagination of mine. Once checked and counted the events, the final ratio was seemingly OK for my luck scale. (*) I was just going obsessed by my bad events and forgetting the other (good) ones : gems, increased PD, sometimes population increases, gifts, items for bonus, etc.

(*) I applied the technique for some other games were I was having trouble as well, with always the same result : I am paranoid :doh: :D

[Poopsi]

I tried luck as well as unluck scales, I found them balanced in terms of results.

that'd make them unbalanced. After all, you PAY for good luck. And dearly, at that.

[Herode]

I don't understand :confused:
Luck enhances your chances of having god events, unluck increases the chance of having bad events. You've got what you paid for, isn't it balanced ?

[Agema]

I think he means balanced in the sense that luck is as good for you as misfortune is bad.

I'd certainly say I found Misfortune 2 rather aggravating, mostly for repeated rebellions and the occasional demolished building. You'd be surprised how beneficial it is to not only have a stream of extra gold/gems/PD but be very unlikely to have disruptions across your empire.

[Edratman]

Herode, that is a very useful analysis of luck/misfortune. I've never encountered a post that even vaguely quantified good/bad events.

That is a study worthy of its own thread.

[Edi]

I think he means balanced in the sense that luck is as good for you as misfortune is bad.

I'd certainly say I found Misfortune 2 rather aggravating, mostly for repeated rebellions and the occasional demolished building. You'd be surprised how beneficial it is to not only have a stream of extra gold/gems/PD but be very unlikely to have disruptions across your empire.
True, and depending on what nation you play, even the militia events might actually be big boosts, especially early in the game. LA Abysia comes to mind, they get some of the light Abysian infantries from a militia events, so getting something like 70 of those in one go in the first few turns for example is an awesome boost.

[VedalkenBear]

Re: the Kirke-Skogu event, KO, I assume this is a negative event, and can thus be stopped by Fortunetelling?

I say this because I've had Kirke and Skogu in the same province for many many turns (my capital) over many games (I like Sauromatia), and I've never ever seen that event.

Also, isn't one of the Partholonians (I think it's the relatively new Queen hero added to Sauromatia) also related to Skogu somehow?

[Kristoffer O]

> Re: the Kirke-Skogu event, KO, I assume this is a negative event, and can thus be stopped by Fortunetelling?

Aha. Most likely. How clever of you :)

Skögu was born in the swamps of Pythia ages ago. His mother left him in the swamps to die, but he was found and nurtured by a Pythian serpent. When he returned to his tribe, he could still not speak a word. He was not accepted and wandered the land until he came to a strange island and met a beautiful enchantress. She took him as her lover and taught him three languages that are spoken today, three languages that are dead and finally the language spoken by the dead. She must have loved or hated him greatly, because she also taught him the dark art of necromancy. When the witch finally got tired of her young lover and banished him from the island, Skögu was maddened by rage and turned his dark arts to practice. He returned to his tribe with a host of ghosts and slew and ate those who opposed him. He sacrificed women as he would his former lover, should they meet again, and made his tribe do the same and he made his tribesmen eat those they defeated in combat. Soon the Horror of the Androphags spread across the steppes. He took seven wives, three living, three old and one no longer living. The sons of his wives were taught the dark arts and he called them Witch Kings. Skögu has since retired into the swamps of Pythia where he feasts upon the flesh of men, awaiting the arrival of his former lover. Skögu rides a Pythian serpent reanimated by vile magic.

Once, long before the arrival of the Amazons and the Witch Kings, there lived a highly magical race in the Sauromatian steppes. They are called Partholonians by the few who still remember them. With the emergence of the Witch Kings, the few remaining Partholonians were driven from their lands and the Witch Kings stole their knowledge and ate their flesh. Delgnat, daughter of Sera and an able sorceress, stayed and witnessed the passing of her remainingin kin. With growing despair, she watched her last kinsman die. In defiance of the old traditions, she turned to dark sorcery and reanimated her brothers and sisters and created a court of the living dead deep in the misty swamps of Sauromatia. Here she was approached by Skögu, who wooed her, slew her and ate her. Her dark practices had prepared her for this and she returned in flesh to haunt the Witch King. Skögu was enamoured and took her as his seventh and final wife and together they built a castle for the dead. Delgnat is immortal, but her body slowly withers if she leaves her castle of dead memories.

[Loren]

Not true honey. Losing a lab first turn, with an imprisoned pretender, and no mage build is a disaster, especially for nations that *have* to build commanders that require the lab.

I really think that some events should not occur in the first 3 turns. Sure, I realize that people take bad luck - but... you go to a lot of effort to setup a game - and then someone drops due to getting truly horrendous random events in the first turn.

There are just 5-6 events that shouldn't happen in the first year.

I think what's needed is most bad events shouldn't be able to happen in the capital, period.

Misfortune is already good for points, basically every guide you read out there points to misfortune. I do not see how removing one thing misfortune can possibly harm will help balance the game, or do anything else useful.

The problem is that as it stands it's a big risk-taking. Maybe you get knocked out by a bad event early, if not you gain from having the points. You get imbalanced games when a player is taken out. The player who loses the gamble doesn't lose much because they quickly see they are dead, the player who wins the gamble has a better chance of winning.

I believe this sort of thing is harmful to the game. Remove bad events from the capital but make luck/misfortune have more of an effect elsewhere--perhaps raise the maximum number of events per turn, add some nastier events--Bogus II, just like the original except every turn he attacks what he thinks is the weakest adjacent province.

[Zeldor]

Unrest events early on should be more balanced though, especially multiple unrest. Being unlucky is 1 thing, getting eliminated by it is another thing. And no, that risk is no reason to go for Luck.

We all know that biggest problem is that Luck does not work well with Order 3. And 90% people take O3. So they naturally take misfortune as it also does not scale with size and is useless if you conquer enemy provinces [and well, that is your goal, isn't it?]. It can of course work nice on smaller maps, when you take a risk of lower income for a chance to get nice gold/fort/gem events instead. Hard to build any strategy on it though.

[Aezeal]

I agree Zeldor misfortune gives bad events... sure, that is known and accepted and the whole point, but getting ruined by it on the first (or first 3-5) turns is not balanced

[Edi]

Bad events are the whole bloody point of misfortune. If you take it, then you run the risk of being ruined by that misfortune early on, tough luck. Even if it does cost you the game in the first few turns. On the other hand, with Misfortune 3, you just got 120 points extra to spend on dominion, magic paths and/or other scales which should presumably offset the problems of the misfortune scale.

Misfortune is already one of the most widely used scales, so why the hell should it be nerfed just so people can feel they can safely take it? Can anyone give me any actual viable reason why this should be?

The best solution I can see is increasing the maximum number of possible events per turn, as that would scale both luck and misfortune a lot better, especially in large games.

[Zeldor]

I am only talking about getting for example 120 unrest on turn2 in your capitol. Order should decrease unrest events. And I am talking about that not in context of misf-luck balance. As I said - not scaling of it + bad events from enemy dom replacing your good ones is a thing that makes it unbalanced.

[Herode]

I don't understand. Why would 90% people take Misf if it is unbalanced, that's what I cant' figure. If Luck is not worth its price and Misf unbalanced, then 95% of the players should take Luck 0, I guess :p

[JimMorrison]

At first I thought Zeldor was using reverse psychology to argue just for a Luck buff, not a Misf nerf. :p

What a strange world we live in. ;)


Though Edi, arguing Misf 3 doesn't really work, it's rarely taken. The 80 points from Misf 2 aren't going to offset a knight attack on turn 3, nothing will. :p But I'm not arguing a point, those who take the Misfortune are taking a calculated risk that with current game mechanics, they are getting a measurably better long term benefit with O3/Mis2, than with T2/L3.

If you can't stomach that risk, then go even scales, no one is holding a gun to your head. :p

[Zeldor]

JimMorrison:

Like unrest events won't hit you if you take Luck :) They are just less likely.

I think that Misfortune is bad enough, but Luck is not good enough to use your points on it. Luck0 is not worth 80 points either. Luck should increase chance to get a hero by 2-3% per tick, event limit should be removed and militia events should be replaced by national unit events where it is not done yet.

[chrispedersen]

Bad events are the whole bloody point of misfortune. If you take it, then you run the risk of being ruined by that misfortune early on, tough luck. Even if it does cost you the game in the first few turns. On the other hand, with Misfortune 3, you just got 120 points extra to spend on dominion, magic paths and/or other scales which should presumably offset the problems of the misfortune scale.

Misfortune is already one of the most widely used scales, so why the hell should it be nerfed just so people can feel they can safely take it? Can anyone give me any actual viable reason why this should be?

The best solution I can see is increasing the maximum number of possible events per turn, as that would scale both luck and misfortune a lot better, especially in large games.



The problem is edi, as I tried to point out before, is that other people pay the price for *you* taking unluck. I'm not talking scales.

If a player takes misfortune 3.. and gets knocked out of the game on turn 1 - or even in the first year - it unbalances the game for the remaining players.

[Meursy]

Bad events are the whole bloody point of misfortune. If you take it, then you run the risk of being ruined by that misfortune early on, tough luck. Even if it does cost you the game in the first few turns. On the other hand, with Misfortune 3, you just got 120 points extra to spend on dominion, magic paths and/or other scales which should presumably offset the problems of the misfortune scale.

Misfortune is already one of the most widely used scales, so why the hell should it be nerfed just so people can feel they can safely take it? Can anyone give me any actual viable reason why this should be?

The best solution I can see is increasing the maximum number of possible events per turn, as that would scale both luck and misfortune a lot better, especially in large games.



The problem is edi, as I tried to point out before, is that other people pay the price for *you* taking unluck. I'm not talking scales.

If a player takes misfortune 3.. and gets knocked out of the game on turn 1 - or even in the first year - it unbalances the game for the remaining players.



I've got to say I don't really see the logic in this argument, that taking Misfortune costs all other players in the game. I mean players can get knocked out early for any number of reasons, including a host of real-life issues cropping up causing a withdrawal, simple incompetence (you know, damn, my uber-Markata rush tactic just didn't work out this time!) and, of course, bad luck of the regular kind (having one's expansion force wiped out early next to a powerful early-game nation through an inadvertent meeting, for instance).

So what to we do against these other things? Soul Contracts for all MP participants promising infernal retribution if they ever ever leave the game? Application of The Sickle Whose Crop Is Pain to the scrotums of those whose early game is considered inadequate?

I mean people get knocked out relatively early in nice normal no alarms no surprises games (at least I gather from reading the forums).

In a current game of mine three players including myself ganged on one, and when his resistance broke one of the three was in position to sweep up the bulk of the rushee's provinces while we were recovering from the fighting.

The rushee himself had expanded beyond all other nations early in the game, possibly due to the fact my own expansion had been less than optimal (I refer you to the 'incompetence' point made earlier).

Both these events were quite 'unbalancing' in the sense that one player set up a massive empire far outstripping the other players in the game.

But so what? That's every game!

Perhaps the most unbalancing thing about early misfortune events (again taking this from comments earlier in the thread) is that the people getting such events decide to go AI, when a bit of elbow grease could at least make them competitive and stop those lucky bastard neighbouring nations from sweeping in for easy pickings. This obviously doesn't apply when you get your cap sieged by indy's before you own another province (which must be horrendously unlucky; how often does that happen anyway?)

It's a lack of respect for 'game balance' that's the real problem! :) Play it out misfortunteers!

[JimMorrison]

Honestly, the most breathing room I would think fair at all, is 2 turns, global lack of unlucky events - just to establish the playing field.

Beyond that, no complaints - you bought, or sold the scales - now live with them!

I've said it before, and I still believe it. I would rather be taken out early 9 times out of 10, and win once, than play out 10 mediocre games where I never had the faintest whiff of victory. :p So if that horrid unluck event happens at the start, then smile, thank everyone, bow out and join another game. No one can actually hate you for being sieged by knights and having your lab burned down.

[Jarkko]

Luck would be much more viable if:

1) The cap for number of random events would be higher
2) The generic event for militia would be replaced by events generating national troops (or at least replaced by the event generating fanatics; at least the fanatics are sacred so they don't have lower upkeep and can actually be quite good for a while if you have nice blesses)
3) Luck scale would totally prevent bad events and instead fire only good events for the first N turns of the game, where N = Luck-scale x 2

[JimMorrison]

Luck would be much more viable if:

1) The cap for number of random events would be higher
2) The generic event for militia would be replaced by events generating national troops (or at least replaced by the event generating fanatics; at least the fanatics are sacred so they don't have lower upkeep and can actually be quite good for a while if you have nice blesses)
3) Luck scale would totally prevent bad events and instead fire only good events for the first N turns of the game, where N = Luck-scale x 2


1) Would "fix" it alone.
2) Also needs to be done, getting a horde of militia is quite unlucky.
3) < shrug >

[Herode]

3 - Horror !! I love bad events, even when I buy Luck :p
It's for suspense and so on, you know. OK, I confess I mostly play for fun, not for winning (although I also love winning but this seldom happens, maybe by unfair unluck :D).

I agree with 2, and strongly !

About 1, I'm dubious. Too many random events => random game.

Honestly, the most breathing room I would think fair at all, is 2 turns, global lack of unlucky events - just to establish the playing field.

+0.5. Global lack of any event, unlucky or not.

[Olive]

JimMorrison:

Like unrest events won't hit you if you take Luck :) They are just less likely.

I think that Misfortune is bad enough, but Luck is not good enough to use your points on it. Luck0 is not worth 80 points either. Luck should increase chance to get a hero by 2-3% per tick, event limit should be removed and militia events should be replaced by national unit events where it is not done yet.

I don't think luck is that worthless. With high luck, random events can bring you a lot of money, several items, and more important, gems of types you may not get with the usual Order/Misfortune.

[JimMorrison]

JimMorrison:

Like unrest events won't hit you if you take Luck :) They are just less likely.

I think that Misfortune is bad enough, but Luck is not good enough to use your points on it. Luck0 is not worth 80 points either. Luck should increase chance to get a hero by 2-3% per tick, event limit should be removed and militia events should be replaced by national unit events where it is not done yet.

I don't think luck is that worthless. With high luck, random events can bring you a lot of money, several items, and more important, gems of types you may not get with the usual Order/Misfortune.


I often take Luck scales. It's not that I don't like them, but I do understand the reasoning of those who don't. But with scales builds, with certain nations, I'd rather have the Luck than anything else I could buy for those points.

[Zeldor]

Olive:

They are cool and nice, but good for small maps and small nations. There are 3 events max, when you conquer enemy misfortune lands bad events from there will take that slots. For magic gems in good amount you need magic scale and not every nation wants it. For many gold events in the beginning you probably want turmoil, but well, that gives you less gold. Luck3 vs Misf2 is 200 points. You can buy a lot for that [and not suffer much with Order 3 you want to have anyway].

[Olive]

I'm not sure anymore. I'm a former monomaniac of Order 3 / Misfortune 2, but I've become really p!ssed to have provinces invaded by barbarians or knights. If the PD is strong enough to stop most barbarian invasions, yes, otherwise I'll avoid misfortune. And problem on big maps is that, even with order, you'll get 3/4 events a turn.

I guess it's all about the nation. Actually, I'm really enjoying playing Gath with Order 3 / Misfortune 2, barbarians don't match a 20 PD and the cash flows.

[Zeldor]

Olive:

You can get some XP on your SCs and thugs that way :)

[Olive]

Yup, it can be a useful way to fix the problem. :)

Another really bad event is vine men invasion. When you take back the province, there's almost no population anymore. Pity when you just started bloodhunting the province and built a lab to avoid micromanagement. :o

[Edratman]

This thread confirms what I have seen about misfortune:

1. With decent PD, you can withstand the effects of misfortune if you can make it about 15 turns or so without taking a fatal/near-fatal event.

2. The points from misfortune are real handy if applied elsewhere.

3. If you get crushed by bad events early it is the games fault.

[Dedas]

Some nations have misfortune "preventers". I usually take misfortune when playing a nation that has them.

[Poopsi]

I have to ask: do they stack? If they do, misfortune would be almost a must. Assuming it aint right now.

[konming]

Not only they stack, they also stack in a simple straight forward addition style. So 7 sybil completes prevent all bad events in a province.

[thejeff]

This thread confirms what I have seen about misfortune:

1. With decent PD, you can withstand the effects of misfortune if you can make it about 15 turns or so without taking a fatal/near-fatal event.

2. The points from misfortune are real handy if applied elsewhere.

3. If you get crushed by bad events early it is the games fault.

Which suggests to me that Misfortune would be better if it wasn't so front loaded. Since getting destroyed by Misfortune in the first few turns isn't that big a deal, just join another game and Misfortune becomes progressively less of an issue later on, the best fix would be to lessen the chances of a disaster early on, but make it scale more for the late game. Either more events with more provinces or more really bad events unlocked by the Misfortune scale.

The first would be better, the second easier to accomplish. The intent would be for Misfortune to still bad enough to balance the points gained without the risk of early disaster.

[Zeldor]

afaik fortune tellers don't exactly stack, but bad event makes a roll against every one of them.

[Loren]

Bad events are the whole bloody point of misfortune. If you take it, then you run the risk of being ruined by that misfortune early on, tough luck. Even if it does cost you the game in the first few turns. On the other hand, with Misfortune 3, you just got 120 points extra to spend on dominion, magic paths and/or other scales which should presumably offset the problems of the misfortune scale.

Misfortune is already one of the most widely used scales, so why the hell should it be nerfed just so people can feel they can safely take it? Can anyone give me any actual viable reason why this should be?

The best solution I can see is increasing the maximum number of possible events per turn, as that would scale both luck and misfortune a lot better, especially in large games.



The problem is edi, as I tried to point out before, is that other people pay the price for *you* taking unluck. I'm not talking scales.

If a player takes misfortune 3.. and gets knocked out of the game on turn 1 - or even in the first year - it unbalances the game for the remaining players.

That's what I've been saying, also.

Not only does it mess the game up for the rest of the players but it actually hurts them worse than it hurts you. You're quickly out and can devote your time to a new one.

[Ironhawk]

Tho I highly doubt this will ever get implemented, the way to make Luck/Misf scales really work is this:


Include the turn number as a variable to the severity of the events.


So you take every positive or negative effect that an event has and multiply it by some amount of the turn. This would prevent Misfortune from being such a point-mine as bad events in the late game would be REALLY BAD. Imagine a gold loss event of 500gp or so! On the other side of the coin it would also provide a boost to Luck in that it would provide more benefit to a large nation once the events-per-turn limit was reached.

[Edratman]

Good idea Ironhawk. A minor permutation would be to step the events based on turns, such as level 1 for turns 1 to 5, level 2 for 6 to 15, etc.

[Arralen]

The problem is not the number of turns, but the fixed (max) number of events: If you have 40 provinces in the late game, you still get only .. what was it? 4? .. events ..
If max number of events would be dependant on the number of provinces owned (e.g. max 1 event per every full 5 provinces) you would be a bit safer in the first turns, but into much more hurt in the late game .. .

And, o.c., there should not be any random events and mercs during the first 6 turns (5? 10?) of the game .. they can only be unbalancing, therefore ...

[Edratman]

I suspect the limit on the number of events is a spacing issue, ie, there are only 4 slots allocated for events. Maybe it can be changed, maybe not.

This is based on the fact that I've discovered other limits in the course of modding. One example is that there are 5 lines available for modded sites. The game just ignores any commands beyond 5 lines.

[chrispedersen]

Disabling game ending misfotrune in the first few turns was also what I was suggesting.

I also agree that the limit of 4 bad (or good) events really is necessary for misfortune to scale.

However, if the coding really is stuck on 4 events, Then I would suggest a slightly easier modification.

Generate random events based on the true incidence. Aka an empire of 30 territories might generate 5 bad events and 2 good ones.

Misfortune 3 would ensure that the 3 Worst events and 1 random event of the remaing 5 gets through. With 2 bad events and 2 good events remaing.. it would be 50/50 what kind of event you got.

Misfortune 2 .. would ensure that 2 worst events and 2 random events of the remaining 5 would get through.

How is this an improvement? rather than the first 4 chronolgoical events occur, it means that the the worst (best) events occur, according to your luck scale.

[Zeldor]

Yeah, right. Where do you live? Expect what can be done. Increasing event limit is the easiest thing to do and if it can't be done in dom3 then surely some more complicated ideas like your are even less possible. I at least hope that they will tell us when they start making dom4, so we can make a nice wishlist.

[Arralen]

Increasing event limit is the easiest thing to do and if it can't be done in dom3 then surely some more complicated ideas like yours are even less possible.

You might be right with this one ...

I at least hope that they will tell us when they start making dom4, so we can make a nice wishlist.

.. and there is/was a wishlist somewhere.

ALAS, there will be no DOM4 .. they told us already, several times !!

[JimMorrison]

[QUOTE=Zeldor;636398]
ALAS, there will be no DOM4 .. they told us already, several times !!

Not so at all. They just said that it's not the project that they are currently working on. They wanted something new and different, can hardly blame them. I think Dom4 will be better if they focus on something else for awhile, learn even more, see even more, become slightly more godlike. ;)

[Endoperez]

Yeah, right. Where do you live? Expect what can be done. Increasing event limit is the easiest thing to do and if it can't be done in dom3 then surely some more complicated ideas like your are even less possible.

You are right in that it probably isn't easier to create, but it seems like it might be easier to incorporate into the existing codebase. As such, it'd be a good suggestion if it's difficult to just increase the amount of events - as Chrispedersen said.