Luck/Turmoil versus Nothing.

[legowarrior]

Is there a Thread about this topic already?
Anyway, I would to hear some pros and cons about going Luck/Turmoil Route rather than just leaving everything blank.

With Luck/Turmoil you get access to heroes sooner, you get more magic crystals then you would other wise, but I assume you get less gold despite the events and you get events that could hurt you.

On the other hand, a lot of nations have fortune tellers, so that should help with many of the problems.

How does the forum feel about either of these?

[Gandalf Parker]

Like many things in the game any answers which sound absolute, like its true every time, should be suspect.

There are nations where this is less of a problem than with other nations. Such as the fortuneteller thing you pointed out. There are also nations who can benefit from turmoil such as Pangaea. On the other hand, some nations could be severely crippled by it. Especially if trying to use it in combination with other extreme scales.

As with many things in Dom3 the nation, type of game, size of game, size of map, call all affect whether this is a good route or not. But from what you say I think you have a good grasp of the pros/cons of it.

[Hoplosternum]

Agree with Gandalf.

But as a further point re Fortune tellers. They won't save you from misfortune issues usually and I would largely discount them from your luck/misfortune calculation. This is because one of the main problems with misfortune is the regular barbarian and unrest events that crop up causing income and province losses. Even if you have enough Fortune Tellers to stop bad luck they only affect the province they are in. And as they are usually mages you want them concentrated at your research centres rather than spread out stopping bad events happening. So they don't stop the 'cost of misfortune' much.

They mainly help the Capital. There are some very serious bad events that can all but kill you (especially in multiplayer) if they hit your capital very early. The Vampire Count, Bogus or some other serious attack on your Capital. The big population killers striking your capital (sometimes multiple times). And the loss of your capital's Lab very early on. Any of these can be fatal or at least lead to you falling back too far to recover.

The problem with fortune tellers here is that when these events really hurt is in the first couple of turns or at least the first half year of the game. And at that stage you are unlikley to have enough Fortune Tellers even in your capital to make sure these can't happen. By year two your fortune tellers may have made your capital safe from bad events. But by then none are fatal by themselves.

[legowarrior]

I am a fan of the Jomon, and Onmyo-ji is one of the first purchases I make (in the future it will be the second). I realize that they only make up for a small amount of what can go wrong(PD probably helps as well), but you also have a lot of good things happening as well, hopefully more good things then bad. So, it's just a small amount that tips the scale a little more to turmoil/Luck rather then nothing, just like conscription tips the scale to use order a bit.

[RadicalTurnip]

I'm not certain, but I also believe turmoil leads to unrest being more of an issue? This is just a rumor I heard, not necessarily true.

But luck does keep you from the nasty events (as mentioned) and somewhat help alleviate some of the pain of other bad scales (namely death scales) though they don't get rid of all the plague events.

[Gandalf Parker]

High misfortune can be a real pain. Yes it raises unrest and it brings bad events. But it also can be a pain to others who are trying to push their way into your dominion. If you use something like fortunetellers to protect important provinces, its possible to use misfortune as a tactic against others.

Consider Bogarus (in the late age).
Fortunetellers for home, sneak commanders that cause misfortune and unrest and spy and stealth-preach. Sneak units to go with the sneak commanders that cause additional unrest. And 4th lvl summons for misfortune (0-lvl if cbm is used). Do you think all that is just coincidence? The also have national summons for 2 raise-fortune units and 4 seducers. A strategy of turtling while using these to lower the combat resources of your neighbors would seem to me to be almost pre-written into this nation.

[chrispedersen]

High misfortune can be a real pain. Yes it raises unrest and it brings bad events. But it also can be a pain to others who are trying to push their way into your dominion. If you use something like fortunetellers to protect important provinces, its possible to use misfortune as a tactic against others.

Consider Bogarus (in the late age).
Fortunetellers for home, sneak commanders that cause misfortune and unrest and spy and stealth-preach. Sneak units to go with the sneak commanders that cause additional unrest. And 4th lvl summons for misfortune (0-lvl if cbm is used). Do you think all that is just coincidence? The also have national summons for 2 raise-fortune units and 4 seducers. A strategy of turtling while using these to lower the combat resources of your neighbors would seem to me to be almost pre-written into this nation.

SP maybe gandalf, but in MP bogarus is going to have be a huge target, due to the incredible research of the starets. You're going to be spending your time and attention either with an awake pretender or churning out blood research to get past the mid game.

[rdonj]

Generally if I want to take luck, I try to take it with neutral order. Otherwise, with turmoil you lose out on a lot of gold potential. On the other hand, if what you really want is just a lot of gems, and you're not that worried about gold, then turmoil can be worth it. That said, I would really only play turmoil/luck with pangaea.

[13lackGu4rd]

Generally if I want to take luck, I try to take it with neutral order. Otherwise, with turmoil you lose out on a lot of gold potential. On the other hand, if what you really want is just a lot of gems, and you're not that worried about gold, then turmoil can be worth it. That said, I would really only play turmoil/luck with pangaea.

and EA+LA Mictlan and any other nation that you go to a quick blood economy/strategy. I guess MA+LA Abysia and some other nations can also work well for it, though taking them with Turmoil does raise some difficulties...

[rdonj]

True, if you plan on relying on blood hunting, turmoil luck makes a lot of sense.

[RadicalTurnip]

If I'm going to kill my scales to make a good bless/a good pretender, I usually take luck (and sometimes growth) and then just lower everything else.

[DonCorazon]

I hate Luck. Psychologically, if something good happens, you feel like you paid for it, and if something bad happens, it pisses you off since you spent the points to get those positive scales.

Misfortune is the opposite - if something bad happens, you feel okay since at least you got the design points, and when good things happen, you feel like you cheated the devil his due.

[Cammorak]

I tend to favor luck as it eliminates some province dependence and, contrary to the name, can actually be fairly reliable, though not always what you need at the time. I think it's also useful for nations that will look to diversify their magic earlier as it makes bootstrapping much less painful.

Also, it depends upon PD to a lesser extent. Granted, no PD is good, but given the choice between garbage PD and PD That Might Actually Kill Something, most players will attack the nation with garbage PD early. Less reliance upon provincial income/gems makes this less painful.

[Verjigorm]

I've played around with Luck/Turmoil several times. You don't need fortune tellers. You will generally get fewer bad events than a player with Order/Misfortune. However, the nation you select has to be able to absorb the loss of revenue caused by the turmoil scale.

Frequently, when taking Turmoil/Luck, I found it's extremely unwise to go heavy on Turmoil because there's no way to repair the loss of tax revenue.

Keep in mind that a lot of this is just strategizing and hasn't been put into practice.

You lose 7% income per shift toward Turmoil so sticking in the 1-2 Turmoil range will allow you to balance (up to 12%) the revenue loss with increases in Production/Growth.

I messed with T'ien Chi with this pretender (Keep in mind I'm not crazy about him overall right now, he was a test candidate):

Lord of Plenty (Body 1339, 150 hits)
Magic: Earth 8 Astral 4
Dominion 5
Scales: Turmoil 1 Productivity 2 Cold 1 Growth 2 Fortune 3 Magic 1
Imprisoned

Why I like MA-TC for Luck/Turmoil:

TC has incredible magical versatility and some relatively cheap basic mages and regular units. They have a need for extra production to build archers well since their archers are kind of resource intensive, so they are naturally predisposed toward Production scales, and they have old mages (not withstanding their national age reversal spell), so growth works too.. Taking magic scales allows for special events to occur. I'm not sure which events take which levels, but I'm sure there's a table somewhere (in fact I know there is). I think Luck-3, Magic-3 has a special event associated with it.

Ignore the magic picks and focus on the scales. That was an interesting but not very useful experiment.

The experiment showed that you can sustain very good mage and unit production with a flat income bonus (0% total). The money drop specials are the bomb, but it's the gem drops you're looking for. The gems are random but occur frequently enough to be useful and will put you ahead of the curve especially since TC can site search everything except blood and death naturally and they can use virtually any gem type.

TC Also has excellent Immortal national heroes.

Now, TC is recommended to take order because of free PD, but I still get PD bonus events. After all, I'm lucky!

So after my rambling.... What I'm essentially looking for in the Turmoil/Luck combo is:

1. A nation that can use a wide variety of gems.
2. A nation that deals well with good scales and slightly decreased money supply (e.g. no bonus money). Cheaper common troops, with higher production requirements otherwise we're wasting the Production scale bonus.
3. A nation that can tough it out with a Dormant/Imprisoned pretender.
4. A nation that can select the Lady of Fortune pretender since she causes good events, not just prevents bad events.
5. A nation that benefits in some other way from Turmoil like Pangaea that gets extra Maenads.
6. A nation that has patrol units that can be used effectively to increase provincial income with growth scales (say 120% tax rate) to supplement the revenue loss from the turmoil scale.

Methodology:

1. Don't overdo the Turmoil. It only gives you a boost to event frequency, but you lose a lot in exchange. Leave the scale flat (0%) or take 1 tick, and 2 ticks cautiously and only if you're taking a patrolling nation.

2. Balance the income loss from the Turmoil with Production/Growth.

....

Now we'll get back to the magic path weirdness:

What I was looking into was the possibility of taking a Bless strategy (which doesn't necessarily work well with TC b/c their Sacreds are cap-only), in conjunction with the luck scale. Certain nations may be able to pull off such an oddity and it could prove to be an extremely useful strategy since:

1. The bless strategy makes for an excellent early to mid game with no need for significant magic use, and therefore, no significant gem expenditures which...

2. Will leave you with a massive and diverse gem horde in mid to late game which is INVISIBLE to your opponents since luck gems don't show up on the graphs which can also let you fly under the radar a little but not too much since a good player will see your scales and anticipate magical diversity, but will give you a head-start when magic starts to take over.

Just some thoughts. I usually like to play with the Lady of Fortune when I take Luck, but with Pangaea, pretender choice doesn't matter as much. The Luck/Blood combination provides for an excellent benefit with Crossbreeding which is my favorite spell in Pangaea (I use Crossbreed fodder in all armies). The "lucky" breeds are formidable and common especially for what you're paying to get them.

---

Oh! As for the Fortune tellers, I always look at fortune tellers as a license to take Misfortune scales. The very first fortune tellers were the Fortune Tellers of Black Forest Ulm in Dominions 2 which forced you to take Misfortune scales. Anyone who has frequently hired cap-only fortune tellers or hire-anywhere fortune tellers can easily take Misfortune scales because you will mitigate bad events simply by research process. Fortune telling is also a cumulative percent chance to avert a bad event per province rather than each individual having a certain chance to avert an event. For example, if you have 20 Sibyls in your capitol each having Fortune-teller (5), you cannot have a bad event in your capitol, ever, regardless of your misfortune scales.

[Verjigorm]

As for Bogarus and the Kalendologists:

Kalendologists are pretty good fortune tellers and cheap, but this does not in anyway indicate that they should be massed as researchers since the Master of Names is far better. The way I see them is to say that they can create a formidable Soul Slay or Enslave Mind communion given their incredible cheapness (90 gold) and the fact that they have 2S basic. Throw POTS with a Kalendologist Communion Master and have someone along with a Banner of the Northern Star (or just cast the spell), and you have a (with just POTS): Soul Slay communion, or with POTS+LOTNS, an Enslave Mind communion. Snazzy.

Unfortunately for the Kalendologist, they have a disadvantage to their blue-robed cousin the Astrapelagist who can:

Summon Simargl Patrols
Cloud Trapeze
Commune to Thunderstrike OR Soul Slay

Astrapelagists also have a better buff array in their communion especially if you have a nice 2/8 which gives you twice as many scripted buffs twice as fast and Thunder strikes for up to 50/4 with +1 (POTS to cast TS), and then +3 bonus for communion size, and +1 again for storm power for 12.5 fatigue Thunderstrikes notwithstanding the fact that you also get 2 masters with 6A5S. You can still POTS/LOTNS to get Soul Slay for 20/3 (7 fatigue), but no Enslave mind.

[Squirrelloid]

Some notes:
Gandalf is wrong: Misfortune is not a weapon against your enemies. Your luck scales act as misfortune scales for your opponents (ie, so long as its in your dominion).

Presumably, your misfortune scales act as luck scales for your opponents.

O/L is a perfectly playable combination in CBM - I happen to like it a lot with some nations. Sure, you get fewer events, but that just means you need more provinces to routinely max out your events...

T/L works for nations who don't need a lot of cash. Not only do the Mictlans generally want to get into blood in a big way, they also don't need much cash to pop out an expansion party every turn. So Turmoil synergizes with the blood, it also isn't that painful.

Many nations that require high resources can afford turmoil because the gold:resource ratio for their troops reduces their gold needs substantially.

(Obviously (almost) all nations would *like* order scales since infrastructure is still costly, but you can make up the difference in faster expansion with a lot of nations since those turmoil scales are usually translating into a better blessing or more-uber awake SC).

[Gandalf Parker]

Well Ive seen plenty of complaints about taking a nation with misfortune and immediately losing it to things like barbarian attacks. Not sure what the timing is for that

[Verjigorm]

It's not the barbarian attacks. PD of 15+ will generally defeat any barbarian attack that you get at Misfortune-2.

The problem is taking Misfortune-3 which gives you Knight parties (like the ones that quest for the Chalice) that appear in a province at random and then expand to adjacent provinces if you don't go kill them. These generally cannot be defeated by any sane PD level.

[Squirrelloid]

It's not the barbarian attacks. PD of 15+ will generally defeat any barbarian attack that you get at Misfortune-2.

The problem is taking Misfortune-3 which gives you Knight parties (like the ones that quest for the Chalice) that appear in a province at random and then expand to adjacent provinces if you don't go kill them. These generally cannot be defeated by any sane PD level.

Um.. are you playing the same game as the rest of us? Or are you just trolling the thread?

There are no knights who go questing for the chalice. There's no code connected to the chalice to cause such a thing (confirmed by lch). This is nothing but flavor text on the Chalice description - there is no substance.

Small numbers of barbs require Mf1 to trigger.

Knight attack requires Mf2 to trigger. Its ~30 militia and knights. They do not go invading other provinces - they work exactly like all other independents.

large numbers of barbs (~100) require Mf3 to trigger.

When i said your opponents luck acts like misfortune for you, i meant it has the scale effects thereby. (Ie, increases % negative events instead of positive). I don't know if your opponent's luck acts like misfortune for threshhold effects (required to trigger event X), but then, I don't know your opponent's misfortune works like misfortune for threshhold effects either. It would not surprise me if the checks for threshhold effects are entirely separate from the % good/bad effect check in the code, and so it may treat it differently in either case, or may even ignore the scale for threshhold effects if its outside your dominion. I simply don't know, but I wasn't trying to make a claim about threshhold effects.

In terms of the turn you capture a province, events are generated before army movement, so if you get attacked by barbs after invading your opponent's province, that event was generated for your opponent.

[Verjigorm]

Bleh... I appear to have lost all reading comprehension and completely misread your (squirrel's) post... significant editing...

I'll generate a turn file for you...

Turn file ready. Look at T'ien Chi this turn and then step it forward and watch the location of the future knight attacks--they always seem to occur in provinces adjacent to the original attack.

The knight attacks do appear move from the original province to adjacent ones or at least they appear to do so by some extremely unlikely coincidence in multiple games. Though it appears to take several turns. This may mean that if you have a Knight attack in a given province and then get a bad event in a province adjacent to it that there is a surety or at least increased likelihood that that province will also be invaded by knights.


As for the Chalice attack, I had always wondered why I was never actually attacked while using it, but I thought that it might be because I was careful to put the chalice back in the lab when not in use. ^_^

[Calahan]

I did some brief testing on the whole "luck scales act as misfortune scales for the enemy" last year, but I had to give up as I didn't have the info necessary to interpret the results. As this was long before Edi did his recent random events list (and their triggers), and it was before I started compiling my own events list. (I actually gave up doing this test in order to start that events list so as to obtain the data I needed for this test).


I tested Order and Production scales though, and the effects of good enemy scales (ie. Order 3 + Production 3) were not reversed when they appeared in my provinces under enemy dominion (ie. They did not become Turmoil 3 + Sloth 3). Although when I tested Turmoil 3 and Sloth 3, both these scales immediately took effect on a province upon appearing regardless of whose dominion was there.

I only did brief testing on the Luck/Misfortune scale though, as it was very hard to judge results from the events I was getting due to the lack of a reference for the events I was getting (ie. No Edi's events list). Although I would say that I know how often bad events strike with a Misfortune 3 scale, and in my brief tests I didn't seem to be getting the same level of horrible stuff happening from a Luck 3 scale in enemy dominion. I guess the Dominions RNG going through a kind phase could explain that though :)


My suspicion is though that the Luck / Misfortune scale acts the same way as the Order / Turmoil, Production / Sloth and Magic / Drain scales. Which is.....

You can never gain the benefit of 'good' enemy scales unless you have positive dominion in the province(s). But any 'bad' scales in a province are always in effect, regardless of positive, negative, neutral dominion. And regardless of whose scales they actually are.


I actually laugh my arse off every time I see someone suggest taking Drain 3 and then using Heretics, Stone Idols or whatever to get the province to neutral or enemy dominion in order remove the -2 research penalty from the Drain scale. All I say to that suggestion is try it!!! The only way to get rid of the effects of a Drain scale is to get rid of the Drain scale :) And this seems true for all the 'bad' scales from the three scale groups I've mentioned above.


I'll probably re-test Luck / Misfortune when I find time now that I have Edi's events list as a reference. Although can't see me actually having that time for several months, and I would be surprised if the effects of Luck 3 did reverse. (although as Squirrelloid indicates, it will probably all depend on just how the game reads scales when it comes to deciding which events can trigger. Since it may well read scales for events purposes irrespective of dominion)


Also, attached is a save to show my point on the Drain scale. Note the LA Pythium Serpent Priests still have a -2 RP penalty even though the cap dominion is neutral. (their RP would be 6 and not 4 if the effects of the Drain 3 scale had been successfully negated.)

[Calahan]

Knight attack requires Mf2 to trigger.
Um... No... There is seriously a Knight Attack event at Misfortune-3...
What Squirrelloid meant is that you need 'at least' Misfortune 2 to trigger Knight attacks. So you will obviously get Knight attacks with a Misfortune 3 scale. (as Misfortune 3 'includes' Misfortune 2 events)

[Verjigorm]

No, never mind... I'm just an idiot and it was an odd coincidence in both occurrences. After the test which seemed to support my hypothesis (I got knight attacks on two adjacent provinces to the original one), I rolled back the turn and tried it again and couldn't get it to repeat--or rather couldn't get the knights to appear to "travel" the second time. Thus, one for and one against.

I have, of course, only taken Misfortune-3 twice--once in SP and once for this test. I did win the game (with Marignon), but the strong attack events are ridiculously frustrating and can cripple a nation in early game. I have never taken Mis-3 since then. The last point isn't worth the 40 design points.

I've never gotten a knight attack at Mis-2, and I take Mis-2 all the time. It must be exceedingly rare.

and Calahan, as for the Mis-2/Mis-3 thing, that's not what I meant. I skimmed his post too liberally and took him to mean that such a thing does not occur. I appear to have skipped a paragraph or something... I dunno... I just woke up.

[Gandalf Parker]

It would be interesting if a misfortune push could work against your enemies. But if it did this would still be a very difficult strategy to play.

On the other hand, that doesnt play into most of my post about LA Bogarus. The fortune and misfortune abilities in that nation are still something worth trying. I dislike how often nations are rated if the discussions dont seem to make an effort to try and use the differences built into those nations.

[Edi]

All bad scales are always bad scales no matter whose dominion.

Luck scales are misfortune for everyone else but the owner of that dominion.

I think you may get the research bonus from magic even in enemy dominion, but that may be the only effect that goes against the grain. Otherwise it's no benefit from positive scales of enemy dominion.

The events list I compiled gives a detailed analysis of what happens with what, and the best synergies are luck 2 order 2 magic 2 (luck 3 + magic 3 if you want the best events as well).

Having turmoil prevents a lot of good events even if you have luck. Having growth prevents most poploss events, but if you have growth and magic, you can get Ancient Presence, which causes 95% poploss. Though once it happens, it can't happen again until the monster is killed off the map.

[Squirrelloid]

Population growth from growth scales seems to happen regardless of whose dominion it is, but you don't get the %income increase if its not your dominion.

You do not gain +RPs for magic scales that aren't in your dominion.

Note, if its your candles, you get the full benefits of any displayed positive scales, even if they aren't 'yours'.

[WraithLord]

I 2nd DonC.
Not only due to psych effect of L/T.
I really really tried to make L/T combo work for me in MP but all I got, repeatedly, was disappointment.
I got the gems alright but my income was so bad and had no income events in first 15 turns => game over.

So T is out of the question for me (with exception of Pan).

As Squirrelloid mentioned good luck can work with order in CBM and indeed it's a combo I like. I'm not basing this only on number crunching but rather on experience.
Oh, and Mft in CBM is such a PiTA. Even for solid PD nations it gets annoying, causes more MM and can be really devastating during expansion phase. In YARG I took msft2 as bogarus and payed a hefty price. It was like I was in war with the barb nation and then there was this important province of mine raided by the visiting heroes. They kept it to the end, neither me nor my enemies could spare the resources to take it back.

One last comment, I have this MP game in which my L3 just stopped working. I mean, I have a strong dominion and >50 provinces but I got no lucky events for like 20 turns in a row. Luck worked perfect for first 20-30 turns of the game and then suddenly stopped. It took me awhile to notice that. Strange.

[DonCorazon]

I really developed a deep-seeded hatred for Luck in the last Rand game. I took a scale of Luck as Sauro, blood-pumped dominion everywhere and expected to be raking in some diverse gems and income. But my main reason was I really wanted to get the Sauro heroes for some sorely needed magic diversity. Seemed to work well in a few test runs.

Well, the actual game got to about turn 60ish and I never got a single hero. Not. One.

Oh and that's not all. My lab burned down twice, once preceding being biesieged, which caused an immense migraine as I could not equip the fort defenders with the appropriate counter gear.

After that experience, you can run all the charts and analysis and stats but I will never take luck scales again. That's right. F-U Luck!

P.s. I also am against Turmoil as Pan since their troops are so expensive and maenads are a one-trick pony, but that's another story.

[Edi]

Luck by itself does little. Luck in conjunction with some of the other scales does a hell of a lot more. If you have otherwise all neutral scales, taking luck is just a waste of design points.

[rdonj]

I kind of like turmoil 1 for pan. You still get maenads, mostly get gold, and it still will work well with luck. I don't think I will ever take turmoil 3 in any real game.

[Foodstamp]

Concerning Pangaea and Luck:

I've found l3/t3 to be great in MP if I survive to the late game. I prefer the many gem events to the lost income. The great thing about Pangaea is that even though Maenads are a one trick pony, they can carry you through the early game. It's not uncommon to be able to eliminate a nearby opponent with Maenad swarms, especially if the map is crowded. This doesn't guarantee survival into the late game, but it does give you some early game strength.

Also, if graphs are turned on, it has been my experience that people tend to shy away from attacking you if your army is many times the size of theirs, and Pangaea is not seen as a big threat in the late game depending on era.

That being said, going the opposite direction with Pangaea and cranking out tons of Minotaurs sure is sexy as well :).

[DonCorazon]

Luck by itself does little. Luck in conjunction with some of the other scales does a hell of a lot more. If you have otherwise all neutral scales, taking luck is just a waste of design points.

To be clear, the scale of Luck I mentioned above was with Order and Magic scales (not just 1 Luck and all else neutral...)

[Foodstamp]

Luck by itself does little. Luck in conjunction with some of the other scales does a hell of a lot more. If you have otherwise all neutral scales, taking luck is just a waste of design points.

To be clear, the scale of Luck I mentioned above was with Order and Magic scales (not just 1 Luck and all else neutral...)

I second this. I LOVE luck 1 with order and magic if you have the spare points.

[Squirrelloid]

optimal scales for maximizing the output of Luck scales are Death 3 and Magic 2 (although might as well take 3 at that point). This unlocks all the really good events.

[Calahan]

I took Order 3 / Luck 3 in a few games last year and I never once got close to having a decent reward for the design points I spent. Since them I'm pretty firmly with Don C's opinion . Since as I see it now..

Order / Misfortune = Win / Lose, sometimes Win / Win.
Turmoil / Luck = Lose / Win, sometimes Lose / Lose.

Turmoil / Luck is at best Lose / Win, since you will always 'lose' from having less income due to Turmoil, but can sometimes 'win' from the good random events you get from Luck. But when you get bad events, it really is a case of 'Lose' 'Lose' on both fronts.

Order / Misfortune is usually Win / Lose, (Win from income boost, Lose from bad events). But it can also be Win / Win when you get good events from the Misfortune scale.

And for me at least, it is the Win / Win and Lose / Lose scenarios that is the real deal maker for 90% of nations when choosing these two scales.

[sector24]

There was a very long thread about this awhile back and the reason turmoil / luck is a sucker's bet is that there is a cap on random events, typically 3 per turn. If you have enough provinces you can hit the 3 event cap, even with order, plus get the consistently high income. Basically you shouldn't take scales based on the % chance of random events, which means you should always take order except for Pangaea.

[Verjigorm]

TTYTT, I don't even, generally, take Turmoil with Pangaea, though I have tried it a few times and always end up disappointed. I hate waiting for a money event to build a castle when I could have a sure thing with Order. This is why I say that when taking Turmoil, you have to be able to absorb the loss with relative ease and that means that it's really only good for nations with cheap mages and Pangaea is not one of those nations.

Pangaea's mages are very expensive--from basic researcher (dryad) to the various Pans, while Maenads are only useful as fodder and even then, not particularly good fodder.

Why would I want to put up with Turmoil for all that time just to get some crappy free units?

I think that (now upon looking at the event list), that even if I wanted to go with Luck, I would either go with neutral scales or Order-2, though I always feel it necessary to balance out the income reduction with Production/Growth which means it's still probably the most expensive scale choice both in terms of gold loss and design point cost. (Order/Luck is obviously more expensive, but if you're going for a scales nation, you probably have a good national unit strategy that doesn't rely heavily on your pretender).

The most successful Pangaea strategies I've used involve Order--forsake the Maenads for more Pan! I don't need crappy Maenads... I can summon better fodder or just let it crawl out of the Carrion Woods.

[pyg]

I'm just posting to increase the size of my, err, reputation. Thank me for it and be rewarded in the afterlife.

[rdonj]

And this thread's existence is why I suggested that CBM increase the likelihood of rare events occuring, to reward taking luck more and be a greater punishment for playing misfortune. That didn't go over so well though.

[Edi]

I took Order 3 / Luck 3 in a few games last year and I never once got close to having a decent reward for the design points I spent. Since them I'm pretty firmly with Don C's opinion . Since as I see it now..
In the current game I'm playing I took Order 2, Luck 2, Growth 2, Magic 2 with Machaka and by turn 40 I've had at least 20 750+ gold events and a host of others.

I bought some of those scales with sloth and heat and a sleeping pretender with rather unimpressive magics but decent dominion.

I could have gone with magic 1, but would probably have had less good events. The growth scales with the others have guaranteed freedom from barbarian invasions and plague events, all of which cause poploss and if you have death or misfortune (or worse, both), those pile up fast and wreck your empire.

Not that this build would work in MP, but that's one anecdote against the other negative ones.

[Squirrelloid]

If I'm playing Turmoil/Luck, its usually because i'm already playing S3 H/C3 D3. Ie, big bless territory (Mictlan, Lanka, etc...) or something like LA Ermor (meh, population).

Returns from luck are vastly increased by D3 and M2+, because it opens up a number of big cash events that also come with magic items. T3S3C3D3L3M3 has netted me 6000+gold/year in events in some games, plus gems and magic items. (Not to mention free forts/temples/labs)

[RadicalTurnip]

Death really opens up good events?

[Edi]

Death really opens up good events?

A few big ones, but just having death at any level (including neutral, instead of growth 1) means you're open to all the plague events. The scales listed above only really work for Ashen Empire or a heavy bless nation in a short game on a small map. Otherwise he needs to expand faster than his dominion and that becomes hard on a large map.

If you want to do your own analysis, check the event list that I have linked from my sig.

[WraithLord]

My D3L3 scales have yielded a feeble amount of good events on the course of the current game (turn 74). As I mentioned I have strong dominion and many provinces.

Thanks but no thanks for that luck scale. I'm going to stick with either neutral or Mft 1 in the future.

[Wrana]

A few big ones, but just having death at any level (including neutral, instead of growth 1) means you're open to all the plague events.
Actually, I often get the plague at Mft 2 Gr 1.

[Wrana]

By the way, I may say that I had a good enough experience with Luck/Turmoil as Helheim and EA Ulm. I think that it's more of cheap castles- than cheap mages- dependant.
I also agree that Luck becomes better with other positive scales. And Misfortune worse with the same. Drain+Misfortune = Magic Fading = ouch!

[DonCorazon]

Death is pretty brutal all around. I tried Death/Luck/Turmoil with Pan and got scourged with plagues. A couple in the capital pretty much offset most gains from the random income events (not to mention the late game joy of managing starving maenad hordes).

Luck is a slippery slope. You pick it, then think you can take some Turmoil to boost its power, then figure you'll throw in some Death thinking you will get the dying prince with his 1500 gold and some powerful magic item, then you go for Magic scales to spice things up with visions of vast gem hordes - in the end you have just concocted a big dookie stew with plagues, chaos, poverty and all-around misery.

Heed my warnings and stick with Or3/Sloth2/Mis2/Mag1!

[Edi]

A few big ones, but just having death at any level (including neutral, instead of growth 1) means you're open to all the plague events.
Actually, I often get the plague at Mft 2 Gr 1.
Not all plague events are prevented by growth.

A quick check of the events list tells me that there is one poploss 50% plague event that can happen regardless of growth/death scale.

There are five other famine or plague events that the presence of a growth scale prevents, and those events have requirements of death 0 (famines) and death 1, death 2 or death 3.

So yeah, if you have misfortune 2 and growth 1, it increases chances of bad events and eliminates a substantial number of certain events from the list, making that one event then more likely.

As far as death events that grant gold, there is one single luck 2 death 3 1500 gold event and one luck 1 death 1 750 gold event. That's all the gold you can get based on death. In almost all cases the money events are either order scale events or luck/order.

[WraithLord]

Death is pretty brutal all around. I tried Death/Luck/Turmoil with Pan and got scourged with plagues. A couple in the capital pretty much offset most gains from the random income events (not to mention the late game joy of managing starving maenad hordes).

Luck is a slippery slope. You pick it, then think you can take some Turmoil to boost its power, then figure you'll throw in some Death thinking you will get the dying prince with his 1500 gold and some powerful magic item, then you go for Magic scales to spice things up with visions of vast gem hordes - in the end you have just concocted a big dookie stew with plagues, chaos, poverty and all-around misery.

Heed my warnings and stick with Or3/Sloth2/Mis2/Mag1!

Absolutely. In CBM make it Mis1 or neutral. As it currently stands taking luck doesn't return the design points investment.

[Squirrelloid]

When I talk about absolutely tanked scales like T3S3H/C3D3L3M1+, the L3 is mostly to mitigate how bad the other scales are. D3 without L3 is a death sentence. And you take scales that bad precisely so you can afford triple blessed sacreds or other crazy nonsense, not because you want luck scales.

Ideally I vastly prefer O3L3 combinations to T3L3 combinations. Even O3S3H/C3D3L3M1+ is vastly better from just a scales consideration. But it costs 240 more points. You're not getting triple blessed jags that way.

[chrispedersen]

A few comments:

I prefer an order3, Mis2 approach. However, on some nations, a
Luck3, turmoil3, death3 (magic3) approach is equally viable.

Specifically, nations that have fortunetellers, or have chosen a fortune teller divinity.

If you build nothing but Fortuneteller (5) units in your capital, you will have %badevent = -100 by the time turn 10 winds around. (Which to my mind is when a lot of bad events get enabled).

I do not recall ever getting a plague event in such circumstances (ie., where the luck + fortuneteller >=100%).

As I recommended in the Mictlan thread, I don't recommend D3 scales for gold so much. I like them it will eventually open up the death path for you by the appearance of necromancers.

The Luck scale has the highest effects on Death and after that on magic. So if you are going to maximize your luck scale, you want to carefully manage these two scales to determine the type and quality of events you will get.

[Wrana]

While agreeing with chrispedersen in many respects,

If you build nothing but Fortuneteller (5) units in your capital, you will have %badevent = -100 by the time turn 10 winds around. (Which to my mind is when a lot of bad events get enabled).

- is clearly wrong. Each Fortuneteller has his/her own, independent chance to prevent bad events. So, even 10 (or 100) Fortunetellers won't prevent all bad events. But they'll prevent enough to make difference. Also, this reasoning works equally in case of Misfortune. Actually, I think that Luck vs. Order choice (when you don't have points for both, of course!) more depends on whether your nation is more gold- or gem-dependent. And this, in turn, on presence of good non-sacred units and on fortress types. Some also argue for Turmoil/Luck when you would bloodhunt extensively.

[Calahan]

If you build nothing but Fortuneteller (5) units in your capital, you will have %badevent = -100 by the time turn 10 winds around. (Which to my mind is when a lot of bad events get enabled).

- is clearly wrong. Each Fortuneteller has his/her own, independent chance to prevent bad events. So, even 10 (or 100) Fortunetellers won't prevent all bad events. But they'll prevent enough to make difference.
@ Wrana - Please do not post absolutes about the game mechanics based on your own beliefs or theories without first testing to back them up. Since it is you who is clearly wrong on this occasion, and Chris Pedersen is correct (although his maths skills are a bit worrrying :))

The fortune teller ability has already been proven to stack, and a total of 100 does indeed prevent all bad events from happening (as the attached save file, which I posted ~2 years ago shows).

Posting false information about how specific game mechanics work (without first testing) only serves to confuse new players (and seasoned players for that matter)

[chrispedersen]

Nice to see you posting again Cal. You wanna test item bonuses on global dispels btw?

As for math ability.. accurate within the handwave precision I was talking about... Some events activate on turn 7, others earlier and later. 10% here or there is a quibble.

[Gregstrom]

I think the math bit was a reference to

If you build nothing but Fortuneteller (5) units in your capital, you will have %badevent = -100 by the time turn 10 winds around.

[Calahan]

You wanna test item bonuses on global dispels btw?
Can't say I have any plans to test the global mechanics for a while. IIRC how I tested it last year, shortly after being enlightened to the truth from a talk with Micah, it was something like this.... (not 100% I remember, as it was literally a five minute job)

Two N5 pretenders casting minimum Mother Oaks. First one casting it with a load of boosters (probably +6 from MLich with tree staff, twisty armour, three Misc), then having the second one try to overwrite the global without boosters. The extra 6 levels (so 30 bonus points at 5 per level) from the boosters should have made the global virtually immune to a base level overwrite, but it didn't, and since the random element on the global mechanic is only a drn, I thought it unlikely that a drn roll would have resulted in a 30+ score so often. So I concluded from that brief run-through that Micah was correct when telling me boosters are ignored for global bonus levels.


I suppose a drn roll could have thrown out a load of 30+ returns just to trick me, but for now I'll assume it didn't :)
I think the math bit was a reference to

If you build nothing but Fortuneteller (5) units in your capital, you will have %badevent = -100 by the time turn 10 winds around.

Yep, Greg has it with regards my mattymatics reference. My decaying mental abilities are not yet degraded to a sufficient level where it can't spot that 5x10 is 50 and not 100 ;)


Also with regards the Fortune Teller ability, I should add that it does not stack with the Luck scale. ie. If you are getting +39% (+45% CBM) chance of good events from Luck 3, you still need a total of 100 Fortune Teller ability to stop bad events, as I'm pretty certain they are two separate mechanics. At least they appear to be. ie. You can not prevent all bad events by making-up the shortfall from the Luck scale bonus with a Fortune Teller total of 61 (55 CBM).

[chrispedersen]

Also with regards the Fortune Teller ability, I should add that it does not stack with the Luck scale. ie. If you are getting +39% (+45% CBM) chance of good events from Luck 3, you still need a total of 100 Fortune Teller ability to stop bad events, as I'm pretty certain they are two separate mechanics. At least they appear to be. ie. You can not prevent all bad events by making-up the shortfall from the Luck scale bonus with a Fortune Teller total of 61 (55 CBM).

I'm pretty sure you're wrong.

[Verjigorm]

Also with regards the Fortune Teller ability, I should add that it does not stack with the Luck scale. ie. If you are getting +39% (+45% CBM) chance of good events from Luck 3, you still need a total of 100 Fortune Teller ability to stop bad events, as I'm pretty certain they are two separate mechanics. At least they appear to be. ie. You can not prevent all bad events by making-up the shortfall from the Luck scale bonus with a Fortune Teller total of 61 (55 CBM).

I'm pretty sure you're wrong.

You can make a province immune to bad events with 100 total points of fortune telling ability, but it doesn't "shift" the even to a good event, it just nullifies it. This was shown in a statistically significant test elsewhere on the board.

Basically, your Luck scale operates independently, saying yes there is an event or no there is not and then selects an event from the list of possible events based on how your luck scale has been tipped.


Then when the event has been selected, if it is bad, the computer rolls dice to see if your fortune tellers successfully counter it based on a d100 versus the total fortunetelling skill in your province and if successful, no event occurs.

That's my understanding of event mechanics.

[chrispedersen]

Also with regards the Fortune Teller ability, I should add that it does not stack with the Luck scale. ie. If you are getting +39% (+45% CBM) chance of good events from Luck 3, you still need a total of 100 Fortune Teller ability to stop bad events, as I'm pretty certain they are two separate mechanics. At least they appear to be. ie. You can not prevent all bad events by making-up the shortfall from the Luck scale bonus with a Fortune Teller total of 61 (55 CBM).

I'm pretty sure you're wrong.

You can make a province immune to bad events with 100 total points of fortune telling ability, but it doesn't "shift" the even to a good event, it just nullifies it. This was shown in a statistically significant test elsewhere on the board.

Basically, your Luck scale operates independently, saying yes there is an event or no there is not and then selects an event from the list of possible events based on how your luck scale has been tipped.


Then when the event has been selected, if it is bad, the computer rolls dice to see if your fortune tellers successfully counter it based on a d100 versus the total fortunetelling skill in your province and if successful, no event occurs.

That's my understanding of event mechanics.

We agree on a lot.
We agree the luck scale increases or decreases the chance of a luck event.

However, the luck scale also changes the chance if an event is good or not. At issue is whether the fortune teller ability stacks with luck scale.

My memory (old and infirm as it is) recalls that a jade emperor (66% fortune teller event) stacks with 45 % luck to yield no bad events in the province that he dwells.

I find it hard to believe that illwinter would invent two mechanisms to do the same thing.

[Edi]

I find it hard to believe that illwinter would invent two mechanisms to do the same thing.
This is a dangerous assumption, since they have a history of having done with certain aspects of the game.

[Squirrelloid]

They don't do the same thing at all.

Fortune teller prevents bad events *after* they are generated. (It also works against Baleful Star iirc, which Luck scales don't effect at all).

Luck scales biases the die roll when determining what event is generated. I believe that there is some list of all the events that could possibly be generated for your scales, ordered from 'best' to 'worst'. A die is rolled that determines which of these events happens. Luck/Misfortune biasses the die up or down the list.

[militarist]

There are standard combinations:
O3M2: O3 is obvious why, M1 would be better but M2 still reasonable.M3 - too small probability to get heroes if any, and, the most important, with this build taking DEATH scale is very risky because you switch on some events like plague, which can be gamechanging if happened in your capital early turns.
But you will anyway take this combination if you do not benefit too much from turmoil like pangaea or gem income events, like Kailasa or you have dominion which kills your population, like LA Rleh and Ermor and order in a long run has no much sense for you as you are not going to have population.

If you play nations were you can afford taking Turmoil, you can generate much more points.

You usually take Turmoil 3 Luck 3. It is 40 points better then O3M2.It is one plus. The second plus - you can take a risk and take Death , even Death 3. Which would be VERY risky in first scenario. So you can potentially get 80-120 more points from death.(80 because with 03M2 you can still take D1 without fatal risks).
So you can generate 120-160 points more points which can be spend anywhere.

Some people like to invest it in Magic1 or Magic3. My favorite builds for some nations and some game settings include Drain 3.

I like T3S3L3D3 for some bless nations.

You get A LOT of points, and you can have awake sorceress , with research 30-40 from first turn (idea is taken from Baal'z helheim guide), and perfect sitesearcher later, with any kinds of bless you need. dominion usually will be low, so if you have a neigbour with high Dom , you should kill him faster then he domkilled you. But with yuor advantage in points and early research you are usually stronger then anyone around in early game.

As result your dominion is not very useful, it's minus.But it's weak,it's a plus. You build a castle where you find good enemy dominion (Magic1 or Magic3). And send your mages there (through flying boots or anything else).
Enemy magic dominion makes the land more magical, and it works for your mages very well. For free. Your first mages you produced in capital you use for expansion instead of researching almost from the very beginning, as you have good early research and in your dominion doing research with mages may be not the best idea,though sometime you do this as well.You also can forge items with mages.

O0L0 is a strange combination, I would never take that- you either need money critically from beginning , then you always take O3. Or, in very special cases (which are especially rare because its very popular to in MP to play with rich settings which make difference between order and turmoil even deeper) you take turmoil with luck. Maybe I would take O0L0 in case I would want to take death scale for points, but still needed money for early expansion (Order/misfortune is risky with death as we remember). But I don't remember a situation from real life I would do it.

[Calahan]

Also with regards the Fortune Teller ability, I should add that it does not stack with the Luck scale. ie. If you are getting +39% (+45% CBM) chance of good events from Luck 3, you still need a total of 100 Fortune Teller ability to stop bad events, as I'm pretty certain they are two separate mechanics. At least they appear to be. ie. You can not prevent all bad events by making-up the shortfall from the Luck scale bonus with a Fortune Teller total of 61 (55 CBM).

I'm pretty sure you're wrong.
Surprised to see people arguing over this instead of just spending the two minutes it takes to test it. And yet again my pet hate of someone making a claim about a game mechanic without any test data to back it up. Even worse in this instance as the test game I already provided showed the date required for this. As Misfortune 3 is -39% Luck, so 140 Fortune Teller ability would be needed if the Luck scale stacked with Fortune Teller ability, and not the 100 that is successfully preventing all bad events in the test game I posted.


Anyway, attached is yet another save file that shows, as I said, the Luck scale and Fortune Teller ability do not stack with each other as they are two separate mechanics. Which is as Verjigorm and Squirrelloid pointed out in more detail in their posts.

The save game attached shows a Luck 3 province (so 39%) plus a total of 70 Fortune Teller ability, for a total of 109. Yet as the message log shows, an Earthquake just occurred. Which I'm pretty sure we can all agree on is a bad event.

[WingedDog]

I like T3S3L3D3 for some bless nations.

You get A LOT of points, and you can have awake sorceress , with research 30-40 from first turn (idea is taken from Baal'z helheim guide), and perfect sitesearcher later, with any kinds of bless you need. dominion usually will be low, so if you have a neigbour with high Dom , you should kill him faster then he domkilled you. But with yuor advantage in points and early research you are usually stronger then anyone around in early game.



Could you give some more details please? Particulary about the nations, bless and ingame experience. The idea is interesting, but I can't tie some things together in my head:

1) Why sorceress? Great sage is cheaper and has a larger research bonus (if that's what this all is about).

2) You'll have really little money and resources, so your sacreds should be really cheap and naked, so Mictlans and MA Ermor are first nations coming to my mind.

3) It's really expensive to get domstr of a rainbow pretender above 6, which means no more then 6 cheap sacreds per turn. Will it be enough to get required critical mass fast enough for a rush?

4) Rainbow pretenders are good for taking multiple minor blesses, but getting a heavy bless with such a pretender is really expensive. With all the points from the negative scales you offer you can have either minor bless in many magic pathes or heavy bless in one path and minor blesses in couple of others (if I'm not mistaken, don't have access to the game right now to check). Will this bless be that effective so small ammount of cheap sacreds could roll over your closest neighbor fast enough and without heavy losses in the early game?

5) Wouldn't your dominion start to drag you down in midgame and later on? Researcher pretender is a good thing but Drain-3 would really slow down your research comparing to others at some point, and heavy turmoil and sloth would make hiring mages more difficult. I know money may come as a good event, but again they may not.

Don't get me wrong, I do not try to mock you, or play know-all. I really find the idea interesting, and want to learn more about particular ingame experience, and, perhaps, use it in my future games.

[RadicalTurnip]

Perhaps he's looking to bless his commanders. This could make sense with Niefelheim (I've done a fairly successful run with T3 S3 C3 Death3 L3 Drain2 dormant pretender with a somewhat low dominion (I think it was 4).

The key was that my 500-a-pop giants could take on pretty much any indie province (we were playing with Indies set to 9). Sure I didn't get one every turn, but every 3rd turn was fine, and that would have been more if I didn't build some researchers early. For research (eventually) I build Skull Mentors (2-a-turn for...a very long time) from all the death sites my expansion netted me (after killing a neighbor), while I researched up the Alteration tree so my giants could quicken themselves (I didn't take a water bless).

I wouldn't recommend my exact strategy, even though I ended up winning through some tricky use of a few giants up front guarding hoards of indy necromancers that I got lucky to find, each with a shroud and a skull staff (E10 bless), so they could summon skeletons for a long time. And spamming Wolven Winter. At least 5 a turn, everywhere I was getting ready to attack or feared being attacked that was outside my dominion.

[WingedDog]

RadicalTurnip

Thanks, building heavily blessed jarls, while pretender researches buffs really does ring the bell. That could work.
Never played Niefel. :)

[Gandalf Parker]

This might be a good place to mention that Nief needs a strat guide in the wiki. the only one there gets ridiculed (altho its not that bad if people will notice that its a solo guide, not an mp one)

[Squirrelloid]

Nief doesn't need a strategy guide. A drunk monkey could play Nieflheim. I mean, unless you're going to follow Baalz (and he wrote a great alternative strategy guide for them, even if it isn't wikified yet), the strategy guide is simply summed up as follows:

E9N4+ bless, build giants.

What else do you need to know? (Ok, I prefer Baalz's choices, but he already wrote that guide).

[RadicalTurnip]

I in no way consider myself good enough to write a strategy guide, I just got Dom III for Christmas, and am still playing around a lot with it. I would likely get eaten in a real MP game (I've only played with a group of up to 6 friends, and none of us have played any other MP Dominions besides each other).

Still, the E9 N4+ is pretty good for it...Nief, to me, is sorta a "See if we can kill them before they get counters" game, along with a slight "If I get way more territory, I can springboard into late-game before anyone else" kind of game. They feel weakest mid-game to me, but maybe I'm missing something.

[militarist]

Squirrelloid,there are 2 reasons not to play E9N4:
1.Fun. It is always nice to play builds which ALSO work.
2.Niefelheim is a strong nation, but if it would be possible to have two Niefelheims and one would be with T3S3L3D3 build and another with standard, on normal game settings and 12 provinces per player map, I believe T3S3L3D3 would win. Nations with small sacreds or sacreds with 2 attacks , which benefit heavily from S9 or W9 or F9 or even A9 can benefit more. For Niefels you can add W6, + minor blesses or 1-3 points in paths which you don't have natural access through mages for sitesearching and summons.

If it would be possible to play "standard" niefel build and T3S3L3D3 niefel build on a map with 12 provinces, I think player with standard build would have less chances to survive.

So the question is not "is the standard build is good?" but in what situations T3S3L3D3 build is preferable, or does this build create enough power initially to cover longterm looses (some if them can be managed though).

WingedDog, as classical example with this build with enchantress (not sorceress :))can be Kailasa. Enchantress is good for strong or average E,A,S bless. Your sacreds are cheap, you can summon sacreds, bless benefits your sacred commanders.

As for great sage. I play only CBM. It's all about points. I like enchantress because is all most of my games I take E9, and enchantress has basic E and S points.E is the most popular 9 bless, S is good for lategame, for opening astral for some nations, S4-S6 bless is useful for any kind of sacreds, S9 is also not so bad, for such nations like Atlantis, Lanka (helps Lanka against tramplers as well!) and many small size sacreds.

And better bless, or better sitesearching abilities which gives you sitesearching path in paths you don't have natural access to, are more important then extra 5-10 points of research.

Any nation which can bet on summonable sacreds or sacred commander thugs is a good candidate.

As for little money and resources..If game settings are not too rich, and game fits to play with turmoil, the main minus of turmoil is a risk not to have enough income on early stage, when you NEED guaranteed income to buy commanders and sacreds each turn.
Ideally you should play test game to see what you can get and what Sloth you can afford.
As for money - it's a question of game settings, early heavy taxation of capital, and, of course, look if the nation you choose

As for domstr, I take 2-6 domstr. 2 is rarely, it's risky, and needs very heavy justification. But alive pretender compensate your early risks somehow, generating dominion from 1st turn.

As for using rainbow pretenders for level 9 bless..If you have at least 1 point n the path you want to be lvl 9, I believe it has a sense.

As for research - you will almost never research in magic negative land. You dominion is weaker then your neigbors, so you will usually have access to at least Magic-1 lands. And dues to faster expansion you will have more lands, more capitals, more gem income and more money. They should compensate lack of magic scale even if you are not very lucky with finding good magic land in a place, where you can produce mages or where you can transport them to without sacrificing too many turns on movement. But even transporting your mages to magic+ land can be not so bad, getting to account that you will have your mages on the border with one of your neighbors, creating a threat and peace of mind for thought about defense. You will ALWAYS have access to Drain-1-2 (which means magic minus 1) lands, which is already doesn't sound so frightening as drain 3.

As for dom 6 for early rush - 6 is definitely enough for most nation for early rush (especially in games where settings are not rich). If you can rely on thugs with 1-2 sacred bodyguards, you can live with lower, even very low dominion. Don't forget about early usage of your mages - with researching pretender you have early access to body etherial, destruction, wind guide and other early spells which will change a lot for your wars.

[chrispedersen]

I'm pretty sure you're wrong.
Surprised to see people arguing over this instead of just spending the two minutes it takes to test it. And yet again my pet hate of someone making a claim about a game mechanic without any test data to back it up.

Its why I said pretty sure, rather than represent it as fact. I do try to distinguish. But thanks for the test = )

[Squirrelloid]

Niefl with turmoil strikes me as a really bad idea because you really need cash early. Death is pretty sketchy too, since you want to run a blood economy later.

Don't get me wrong, I prefer Baalz's build, but Baalz's guide is all about ditching the bless for more lategame options, not about taking painful scales for a bigger bless.

[militarist]

I don't say Niefelheim is a best nation fitting for turmoil, I absolutely agree. It's really expansive nation. I wouldn't do it either. I just explained how it also could work, but I agree that example is not the best for trying turmoil builds.I defenitely didn't try to make a new Niefelheim guide.

[chrispedersen]

you dont' get a magic bonus under enemy dominion.

[chrispedersen]

If you are going for a triple major bless 9x9y9z
a rainbow pretender can work;

You save 8x8x3 points,
versus the usual standard of the oracle which is saves you (6+7+8)*8 points, but would cost you 100 points for the extra 2 paths.

However, this is only true if you only need a relatively few sacred units, for the differential in dominion score starts to factor in.

ie., the oracle starts with 3 picks advantage in the number of sacreds, worth anywherefrom 21 to 24*7 points = 168 points.


Ie., what I'm trying to say, is in most cases an oracle or fountain of blood is a better choice for a pretender so long as the pretender has the paths you want and you want to use a 9/9/9 blessing.

That doesn't however take into account the utility of a rainbow pretender for site searching. Still generally if you have a triple bless, the goal is to get as many of these sacred warriors out there as you can- site searching becomes much less important.

[Gandalf Parker]

Its easy to shoot holes in guides. But a guide doesnt have to be perfect for every game played by every person. Just a guide. As long as it avoids the pitfalls applicable to a nation its worth plugging into the hole. If it works for many people most of the time against average players, even better. IMHO

[militarist]

Chrispedersen you are right, you don't get +, you only negate your -.In positive (and, probably,neutral) magical enemy dominion you don't have your drain effect as well(I don't know what's happening in negative enemy dominion, would be good to check). So, you just have 0 bonus which is still worth it, as it means you got 120 points for free. And it is still better then taking M1, which becomes very expencive (because taking M1 for 40, add 120 you've lost not taking drain = 160 ).

Actually my rule is if I have weak dominion , I'm always looking towards possibility to take Drain3. Drain 3 gives you 120 points, which is almost the price of having awake pretender instead of something between sleeping/imprisoned. But it's pretty beneficial in early game, and if you like early rushes, it's not bad at all. I think with very strong sacreds, like lanka you can also try drain 3 with sleeping pretender, to maximize your points and start research after the stage early expansion. Or even with imprisoned, if you can survive early game with no magic- just start researching in enemy dominion by usual mages.
If you got turmoil in this situation or just limited in $ by any other reason, you just can maximize hiring sacreds, ignoring standard for many 1 mage per turn rule. Your sacreds, blessed so heavily definitely will do much more than mages with early spells.

Hint: water nations , even with dominion 10, always have access to enemy dominion.

[chrispedersen]

Mil,

I agree with you generally. I love to play "pocket dominion" its one of the fun things about mictlan, arco, and a few other nations. I did this strategy very effectively in NAV.

You get no benefit in neutral dominion either.

However, you don't need to have triple blessed lanka in order to rock with lanka.
I do consider drain with lanka, just to increase the mr vs banish.

You'd have a hard time convincing me that an awake pretender is worth more than a higher dominion score and better scales.

Essentially your power curve is number of sacreds you can pump out times the power of those sacreds. In terms of point buys, going to a Dom9 is always cheaper than going to magic path 9.

[RadicalTurnip]

I agree that Niefel is usually a huge candidate for Order over Turmoil, but I was trying a niche strategy, and it was on a medium map against 5 people (so a fairly small map), which meant that I had the game won within a few years. If anybody would have been focused on researching or figuring out how to beat my bless, they would have had an easy time with it, but everyone happened to be in-fighting, so my 2 30-giant armies steamrolled all the castles, and my 7+ thugs raiding into enemy territory bought me most of the other provinces.

I guess this got a bit off-topic, but what I was trying to say is that no pretender build is the best 100% of the time, there are niche uses for everything, even things which seem counter-productive sometimes.

[chrispedersen]

No pretender choice will be the best for all situations - but some pretender choices are optimal or near optimal, and will allow you to both maximize your positives and have a shot at winning the game.

Sub-optimal designs, conversely will lower your chances.

[RadicalTurnip]

Unless of course you get deep into game theory and everyone is planning on playing against you. The the optimum choice is to pick a sub-optimal build that maximizes a different style of play.

But, that wasn't the case. I agree that certain pretender choices are sub-optimal (Sleeping pretender on LA Ermor?), and that a given pretender may be optimal or nearly optimal in many to most situations, but I don't think this is a game where one can play like in a vacuum, you have to look at your opponents and the situation.

I guess that's all pretty obvious stuff...I'm probably preaching to the choir, so to speak.

[Wrana]

The fortune teller ability has already been proven to stack, and a total of 100 does indeed prevent all bad events from happening (as the attached save file, which I posted ~2 years ago shows).

Posting false information about how specific game mechanics work (without first testing) only serves to confuse new players (and seasoned players for that matter)

It seems from today's independent test that you were right. Thank you for pointing out. I'm sorry but it was said to me by someone among old-timer players, so I assumed that it was true.
By the way, the same test also shown that total Fortuneteller 100 seems to prevent all bad events regardless of Misfortune. (Turm 3, Misf 3 - and only good events for 10-15 turns in several provinces).
Of course, my thesis about Fortuneteller being useful with both Luck and Misfortune still stands.
And, by the way, one current game where I have Misfortune 2 gave me 2 or 3 burned temples and 1 burned lab by the end of year 2. Are those who want to use Order/Misfortune strategy ready for such? ;)

[militarist]

"By the way, the same test also shown that total Fortuneteller 100 seems to prevent all bad events...in several provinces "

That's interesting..Does it mean that your can have fortunetellers only in your capital and they work on all your territory? If it is so, it would be a revolution in my valuation of fortunetellers.

[RadicalTurnip]

Has anyone done any tests on whether fortune-telling can prevent bad events that were cast at you? Like Murdering Winter, or Volcanic eruption, or anything like that?

[Wrana]

"By the way, the same test also shown that total Fortuneteller 100 seems to prevent all bad events...in several provinces "

That's interesting..Does it mean that your can have fortunetellers only in your capital and they work on all your territory? If it is so, it would be a revolution in my valuation of fortunetellers.

No, it just means that as soon as you have fortunetellers to a total of FT 100 in a province, it stops to get bad events regardless of Misft score. Several provinces just allow for better statistics (and make running hundreds of turns tests unnecessary).

[Wrana]

Has anyone done any tests on whether fortune-telling can prevent bad events that were cast at you? Like Murdering Winter, or Volcanic eruption, or anything like that?
Unlikely as they are generated by different mechanism. You may test it, though. I'd advice using Debug mod.

[Calahan]

Thank you for pointing out. I'm sorry but it was said to me by someone among old-timer players, so I assumed that it was true.
Please give that old-timer player a slap from me :D

[Wrana]

Thank you for pointing out. I'm sorry but it was said to me by someone among old-timer players, so I assumed that it was true.
Please give that old-timer player a slap from me :D

I'm afraid that would be physically impossible for some time. :)

[Xietor]

To give up the scales of 3 order/2 misfortune that dominated mp when i used to play, I think the heroes should be pretty nifty/exciting when you actually get one. Not be old, and less useful than many commanders other nations can buy in their castles. Which is why i always play with Throne of heroes(Middle age only) or Worthy Heroes.

Aside from the heroes, nations that NEED gold for a good start to survive in mp can rarely rely take turmoil. the loss of income is just too much.

While many here will bash this strategy, I have taken 3 order/3luck in large mp games with good players and won. The theory being that even with 3 order once you get a decent size area you will get 2-3 events a turn anyway. This strategy should not be tried with every race. In those cases i took 3 sloth 2 drain to offset the scales.

If you have trouble surviving the start of mp games, having 3 luck/3 order is also not going to be much use to you. I also sleep(not imprison) a tough pretender for the extra points.

[Verjigorm]

To give up the scales of 3 order/2 misfortune that dominated mp when i used to play, I think the heroes should be pretty nifty/exciting when you actually get one. Not be old, and less useful than many commanders other nations can buy in their castles. Which is why i always play with Throne of heroes(Middle age only) or Worthy Heroes.

Aside from the heroes, nations that NEED gold for a good start to survive in mp can rarely rely take turmoil. the loss of income is just too much.

While many here will bash this strategy, I have taken 3 order/3luck in large mp games with good players and won. The theory being that even with 3 order once you get a decent size area you will get 2-3 events a turn anyway. This strategy should not be tried with every race. In those cases i took 3 sloth 2 drain to offset the scales.

If you have trouble surviving the start of mp games, having 3 luck/3 order is also not going to be much use to you. I also sleep(not imprison) a tough pretender for the extra points.

I've heard Order-3 Luck-3 is a good combination, but that costs 160 points all by itself which presumes that you're going to take a less powerful pretender. I'm assuming you go Rainbow or Fountain with that?

With the Sloth-3 Drain-2 that would indicate your going to be looking for a strong research nation with crappy national units and the non-awake pretender also means you have to be able to survive early game... which leaves very few possibilites... I would be looking at Bogarus with an early rush to Spined Devils and a sleeping Fountain of Blood or a similar build with Mictlan.

[Wrana]

While many here will bash this strategy, I have taken 3 order/3luck in large mp games with good players and won. The theory being that even with 3 order once you get a decent size area you will get 2-3 events a turn anyway. This strategy should not be tried with every race. In those cases i took 3 sloth 2 drain to offset the scales.

If you have trouble surviving the start of mp games, having 3 luck/3 order is also not going to be much use to you. I also sleep(not imprison) a tough pretender for the extra points.
Yes, I've seen it preached by Baalz for some nations. AFAIU, though, such a build requires quite tough, costly units, mostly non-sacred. And this I'd say precludes taking Sloth in most cases. Though costly castles, which also require Sloth, would offset it somewhat...
Would you give an example of such a nation? I can think only of elephantes (and exclude LA Arcos) and maybe Vans/Tuatha here... Pythium is too resources-dependent...

[rdonj]

Off the top of my head...

Any nation with skinshifters (including giant nations).
MA R'lyeh.
Yomi
Baalz shinuyama.
Mictlan
Monkeys

I could go on, but I think that's a good start :) All of those should work with heavy sloth.

[Verjigorm]

Off the top of my head...

Any nation with skinshifters (including giant nations).
MA R'lyeh.
Yomi
Baalz shinuyama.
Mictlan
Monkeys

I could go on, but I think that's a good start :) All of those should work with heavy sloth.

I would say that MA/LA Ermor could also handle it, but you probably just left them out because no one ever picks them. :(

[chrispedersen]

I think both those nations are fine in strength.

I don't remember my usual LA - Ermor strat - I'd have to look it up - but by guess I would say the isuse isn't luck with la ermor, its order.

Since population is killed so rapidly, you benefit more from turmoil getting you luck events early, plus projected dominion.

[rdonj]

Off the top of my head...

Any nation with skinshifters (including giant nations).
MA R'lyeh.
Yomi
Baalz shinuyama.
Mictlan
Monkeys

I could go on, but I think that's a good start :) All of those should work with heavy sloth.

I would say that MA/LA Ermor could also handle it, but you probably just left them out because no one ever picks them. :(

As chrispedersen said, the popkill effect of LA ermor (and the complete inability to buy mages other than indies) makes turmoil a real no brainer for them. I can't really imagine them not taking t3. MA ermor can probably handle it, yes, since shadow vestals should take you through the early game and then you'll be reanimating most of your troops. Mostly I didn't name ma ermor because I felt I could keep coming up with more examples ;)

[Verjigorm]

I think both those nations are fine in strength.

I don't remember my usual LA - Ermor strat - I'd have to look it up - but by guess I would say the isuse isn't luck with la ermor, its order.

Since population is killed so rapidly, you benefit more from turmoil getting you luck events early, plus projected dominion.

With LA Ermor I usually take:

Turmoil-3 Sloth-3 Cold-3 Death-3 Luck-3 Magic-3 Dominion-10 Lich Queen or Rainbow Master Lich

I don't care about extra money because I pillage provinces to create corpses and get money that way. I don't need to hire or maintain troops, so very little upkeep, and my money is generally used to put up buildings, and the Luck events see to a good bit of that. The plague events create free corpses which is good because I can either Raven Feast them if I have air magic or raise them from the dead if I have priests nearby.

Before I would always take low dominion and then worry that my advancement wouldn't outpace by dominion spread and I was depending on Order to get money, but once I decided to just say "F! it" and go all balls on the nasty dominion, I was much happier, since it is both more thematic and interesting to play.

Mines always produce money, so you can jack the taxes up to 200% once all the people are dead (mining with ghouls ftw), "Mrrrhhhrhrhrrh!!!! Goooollld!!!", and pillaging expecially if you can get your hands on some Implementor Axes is really easy with Ermor--this in fact is the best use for crappy hordes of useless dead guys! They may suck at killing troops, but they sure don't suck against peasants! "Go ahead, eat dem brains, but make sure you dig through their pockets for spare change while your at it!"

I've never tried all-balls negative scales with MA Ermor, though... too much reliance on the Grand Thaumaturgs.

[Xietor]

well the race i actually played 3 order/3 luck and won with was ma pangaea. Gorgon.
drain helps their mr. My research sucked but i had a good bless on the white centaurs, used stealth armies, and a lot of blood.

[Wrana]

Off the top of my head...

Any nation with skinshifters (including giant nations).
MA R'lyeh.
Yomi
Baalz shinuyama.
Mictlan
Monkeys

I could go on, but I think that's a good start :) All of those should work with heavy sloth.

Yes, forgot MA R'lyeh, thanks. Monkeys were covered under my elephant hypothesis. Mictlan maybe, but they use strong bless, so would probably be better with either Order or Luck (better with Luck, I think), especially as they usually use massed sacreds, so high Dominion is also good. Yomi - maybe, as their oni troops are resources-light.
About Baalz "antsy" Shinuyama I'll just point out that it uses CBM feature which would probably be removed in time (namely Size 1 for units which are both stronger and tougher than normal humans). And their other troops aren't light in resources at all.

[chrispedersen]

Ko-oni? or the lovely goblins?

[Wrana]

Ko-oni? or the lovely goblins?

If you ask about which Yomi troops are resource-light, yes, I meant oni in general. Goblins are cleverer and put some armor on. :)

[rdonj]

I use mainly the oni when playing as yomi, and the bakemono are more like special forces. So I would always take sloth when playing yomi.

Keep in mind that all the nations I listed were supposed to be playable with both sloth 3 and a combination of order3/luck3. Mictlan is probably the hardest to fit into that category with their bless requirements, but with order 3 they can take a little less dominion, since they should be able to fort up pretty quickly.

[Wrana]

I use mainly the oni when playing as yomi, and the bakemono are more like special forces. So I would always take sloth when playing yomi.

Keep in mind that all the nations I listed were supposed to be playable with both sloth 3 and a combination of order3/luck3. Mictlan is probably the hardest to fit into that category with their bless requirements, but with order 3 they can take a little less dominion, since they should be able to fort up pretty quickly.

Yes, that's why I wondered about Mictlan in this list, but not about Yomi or monkey nations. But maybe - as with Order/Luck they should have money for castles and can take less extreme bless probably - just using sacreds together with massed slingers...

[rdonj]

Yeah, that was the thought. It might make more sense to say ma mictlan specifically, since they are not as likely to be doing heavy bloodhunting, so the order scales would have more benefit.

[13lackGu4rd]

well, MA Mictlan works perfectly fine with O3L3, for EA and LA Mictlan T3L3 is a no brainer...

[chrispedersen]

I disagree completely. Using Turmoil3 Luck 3 for EA/LA mictlan needs consideration.

It is not that Mictlan can't be played that way - it can.
I prefer O3 L-2 for mictlan. Mictlan needs to expand as FAST as possible to get a commanding advantage in the early to mid game. This is best accomplished by fort/temple production.

[militarist]

I've checked all threads about order/luck, but still can't understand all mechanics. What is a base % of probability that event will happen this turn? What basic % that it will be good? Does it depend on amount of provinces?

IS there was such a thing as a "basic" probability of event and we knew base prob.for good/bad events, than we could measure the value of each luck scale increase by doing a sum of each event output with taking to account it's probability: (gold value/gems event brings)*probability

I also so somewhere someone made a test, comparing output from 2 different order/luck combination during 100 turns. Could anyone point me to this?

[Finalgenesis]

the 100 turn test is not going to be enough data base anything on, you need a lot more data points then that to draw a reasonable average.

if anything going the other direction: a hard-crunch of event probabilities factoring with average good/gem/unit gain or loss seem best, modified by events certain combo like death scale will unlock. Using Edi's event list as a base is a good start.

Note: The following includes a lot of my own assumption and extrapolation/ answer I got from various posts in this forum. I have not code-dived or tested these assumptions (Not that I'd know how), please feel free (and please do) to correct me if you see any wrong assumption on mechanics, I'd love to know.

Relevant to the hard crunch method: The more province you have the more events happens (the event generation goes through all your province until a max of 3-4 events have been generated. So having 10 provinces will generate 1 event check for each province for a total of 10, increasing effect of luck/misfortune until you consistently get 3-4 events a turn, also note that if an event is generated, the same province gets to do another event check i think, since I've seen 2-3 events on a single province assuming I didn't hallucinate).

Finally, the local luck at each province is a huge factor, even if you have luck +3, if most of your province are under enemy dominion with misfortune scale, your essentially wasting your luck scale. E.g. if you have 10 province, 4 of which has +3 luck, 6 of which has -2 misfortune from enemy dominion, 4 of your event check will get +3 luck bonus while other other 6 gets -2. Also note that you do not get +luck scales if it has enemy dominion on the same province. This is another often overlooked downside to using luck scale, having to keep your dominion up in order to use it, whereas for misfortune scale you could care less if enemy dominion brings you negative luck (hell you may even get neutral luck out of your opponent's positive luck scales).

For the hard-crunch, I think using one solo province as base is best. Things we need to know before we can do it is the base event occurence chance and good/bad event chance. I assume the good/bad event base chance is 50/50, and say if the base event occurence chance is 20% (made-up number), we have a good start. Next thing we need to know is actual % in Edi's event list, as there are rarity 1 and 2 events (2 being the rarer), what is the ratio of rarity 2 event vs rarity 1 event? (I've wanted to know this for the magic site too for a long time) Say rarity 1 event is 4 times as common as rarity 2, we can now calculate the average pay out of any given scales given a single province. 20% event chance -> 50/50 good/bad event list -> 80% rarity 1 20% rarity 2 event -> mix in modifiers like luck/turmoil scales.

If someone can give me those base % chances, I'd be happy to crunch out average pay out under some common scenarios, i envision it something like this:

3T3L3G3M scale - 48% event occurence, avg payout: 132.2 gold, 12.7 fire/water gem, 2.3 slaves ...etc, 6%heroes, 3.1% free units, 1.7% artifact lvl 2...etc

3O1G2U1M scale - ...etc

It'll be very rough calculation to be sure due to the extreme randomness and various factors like dominion / province # in an actual game, but useful nonetheless for reference.

[militarist]

The idea main goal I want to reach is to measure the value of each step of luck scale, or just of each % of luck, basing on events which cause generation/loss of money/gems/items. Ignoring raiding events and other, which are impossible to compare with something.


So, our forumla is:
(number of events in EDI's DB with rarity-2)*(probability of event with rarity-2)+the same for rarity(-1,1,2)= 10% for 1 check. (based on 1 , capital province, was not tested on many provinces).

Squirellord believes that there are 4 independent checks per turn (4 is a limit of events you can have per turn). Each of them is independent from each other.

So 1 check gives 10% of event, 4 checks gave him about average 36% (24 events during 64 turns).
If we knew absolute probabilities of each rarity, or just relative probabilities of rarity-1 to rarity-2, and we expect EDI's DB to be full,
we could get probability of each specific event. Which is a 99% of the way to calculate the value of each % of luck scale.

Then we could just take a sum of all output of all events which could be measured in gems or gold (including temple loss, etc), * each of them on it's probability and we will have some sum of gems and $. Which can be used as a base for farther calculations, and will let us compare luck and order.

It would be interesting to understand mechanics, mostly to simplify some decisions in certain situations, for example - is there any sense in luck scales in rich games, or O3 is mandatory, the absolute value of some heavy events which give you a lot or take a lot from you - is it worth to take special positive scales or avoid some negative to get rid of some events or to get some events.

[Squirrelloid]

that's not enough information to derive the 10%...

1 province, 65 turns:
44 no event
18 1 event
3 2 events

This fits P(event) = 10%, checked 4 times independently, not too shabbily for only 65 turns.

[Finalgenesis]

4 independent check sounds plausible, it would explain the 2-3 events in a single province I've observed.

For the 24 events during 64 turns data, were there any scale modifiers (turmoil, luck)? So it's game tested that 4x 10% base event occurence is about right?

I was thinking about grouping events into 4 pools: Rarity 1 good, R2 good, R1 bad, R2 bad and sum the output/loss for each pool, throw them into probability formula with base event occurence and we have an instant base output figure to play around with (I think that's what your saying also generally). Of course certain scales open and lock some events. Maybe set up an excel table to show probabilities under all scale scenarios...

Another thing I'm worried about is whether all rarity 1/2 event chance is equal, I've seen a lot more brigands or sharks event then any other rarity 1 events...

And we still need the probabilities for Rarity 1 : rarity 2 events to think about any calculations...

[Squirrelloid]

that was with totally neutral scales. I did not look at event quality.

[Edi]

If you guys want to test certain scale combos, you can make a map where scale modding sites are assigned to all the provinces (Well of Pestilence for death, Strange Opening for misfortune, Temple of the Raging God for turmoil, Totem Poles for luck etc). Or you can just mod a new site that increases all the scales you want to test things with.

The good part about that is that modifying scales for testing with sites is going to cause no fluctuations due to dominion, since the effect is local to the province and always tilted toward that scale at 3. If you want to test a scale of less than one, then you need to use dominion for that.

[militarist]

In Edi's db, there is a description of event:

poploss 20% (not killed, causes immigration event elsewhere)

What means elsewhere? Any neighboring province, or absolutely elsewhere?

[Finalgenesis]

I think that's a linked event, one province gets poploss "immigrate out" then there's also one in the same turn getting "immigrate in". If you score the immigrate in event, your pop gain is 20% of whatever the immigrate out province is. I've seen both end of the events, so I'm assuming this is how it works.

If you get lucky and there's an immigrate out event in enemy capital to one of your province, you can potential see up to 6K+ pop boost

I think the immigration is anywhere, not adjacent, as I got immigrate event in one of my provinces thats at the heart of my territories. Now if I can figure out some way to interrupt their migration and steal the pearls they use to teleport... Thats a lot of pearls :D

[militarist]

One more interesting question. There is a number of good events which can happen with you theoretically. For example, there are many which require Magic 2 (or at least Magic 2) scale. With Magic lower then M2, you have shorter list of possible good events. Does it mean you will have less good events? Or just it means that you will have the same number of events but from shorter list?

[Finalgenesis]

I'm guessing that having less variety of good event does not affect the chance of scoring a good event in the first place. eg. What you said on same number of events from shorter list.

I assume the mechanics to be:

1) event generation check
2) If event occur, roll good or bad
3) if event good, roll event from good list.
4) if event bad, roll event from bad list.

[Squirrelloid]

my guess would be the province has a list of possible events, arranged from good to bad. It rolls a die (of some size) on this list, and permutes up or down based on luck/misfortune scale. So the number of good events vs. bad events in the list would matter. But i could be totally wrong.

[Finalgenesis]

I would defer to Squirrelloid for the actual mechanics in this case, he's undoubtably more familiar with Dom 3's mechanic pattern and quirks then I am, so his guess will likely be closer to how the designers coded it.

[chrispedersen]

I wrote up a long post that seems to have gotten eaten.
But events seem to occur in clusters in provinces, far more than chance would indicate.

For example, I have gotten the *temple made, and temple destroyed events* in the same province, in the same turn.
Same things with labs.

This means that the events follow sequentially from each other.
Ie., events are not rolled randomly on a table and then applied.. its event 1 apply, event 2 apply et.c

I personally think it goes like this:

1. Determine number of events.
2. Randomly choose province for event
3. Determine what events can happen (scales etc).
4. Check each possible event see if it happens.
5. Still have events remaining.. go to 2.

I say this because very randomly in old versions you could get more than 4 events in a province. Which if you had a province with a lot of potential luck events, they might have missed the programming loop to check that (ie., only check at step 5 instead of step 4.

[Squirrelloid]

1. Determine number of events.
2. Randomly choose province for event
3. Determine what events can happen (scales etc).
4. Check each possible event see if it happens.
5. Still have events remaining.. go to 2.

1 is almost certainly wrong based on the data I have. If it predetermined the number of events, you'd be unlikely to see a binomial distribution (which you do see). (I mean, I suppose it could calculate the number of events based on a binomial distribution, but that doesn't seem like the kind of thing JK would have bothered to do. In fact, the only reason to do that is to fool people trying to figure out how events are generated.

[Finalgenesis]

I've also noticed that events clusters and tend to like certain provinces, often times I get events for the same province 50%+ of the time per turn over a year or so. I think it's easily observable, after two or so years holding 10+ province you should notice that certain province name pops up a lot more often, I usually end up memorizing where the province is base on the name for those that gets an event every other turn or so.

[chrispedersen]

1. Determine number of events.
2. Randomly choose province for event
3. Determine what events can happen (scales etc).
4. Check each possible event see if it happens.
5. Still have events remaining.. go to 2.

1 is almost certainly wrong based on the data I have. If it predetermined the number of events, you'd be unlikely to see a binomial distribution (which you do see). (I mean, I suppose it could calculate the number of events based on a binomial distribution, but that doesn't seem like the kind of thing JK would have bothered to do. In fact, the only reason to do that is to fool people trying to figure out how events are generated.

how is rolling four times (step one) not binomial?

[LDiCesare]

The issue with this:

1.Determine number of events.
2. Randomly choose province for event
is that it would take the order/turmoil probability factor out of the equation, or use that of one predetermined province like the capital.
To test it, we'd have to put a capital with +3 order and another province with +3 turmoil and see
- if events are evenly balanced between the provinces
- if the overall probability of events is that of an order 3 province or an order 0.

[Squirrelloid]

1. Determine number of events.
2. Randomly choose province for event
3. Determine what events can happen (scales etc).
4. Check each possible event see if it happens.
5. Still have events remaining.. go to 2.

1 is almost certainly wrong based on the data I have. If it predetermined the number of events, you'd be unlikely to see a binomial distribution (which you do see). (I mean, I suppose it could calculate the number of events based on a binomial distribution, but that doesn't seem like the kind of thing JK would have bothered to do. In fact, the only reason to do that is to fool people trying to figure out how events are generated.

how is rolling four times (step one) not binomial?

But why would you check that way if you're determining number of events all at once? It only makes sense to determine them independently if you're checking for the event after some other step 1. (Especially given what we know of JK's programming style)

In addition to the problem LDICaesare points out, your method also predicts that empire size has no effect on the number of events seen. I'm pretty sure this is wrong, but I haven't recorded data to test it specifically.

[thejeff]

Because it's based on a %chance of events happening? I suppose you could come up with a complex formula to make the percent bonuses/penalties (from Luck/Misfortune or Order/Turmoil) meaningful, but it would seem easier to just use them multiple times.

On the other hand, the number of events does seem to scale with number of provinces.
On the gripping hand, it doesn't seem to scale at all linearly, which the check each province in turn would suggest.
I ran a test recently, after the discussion about events happening more frequently in low number provinces:
2 Nations on a 602 province map, provinces divided evenly. Both nations T3L3 Dom10. Temples in every province to push dominion up as fast as possible.

C'tis: provinces 1-301
Turn Events in province
5: 170
6: 68
7: 15,36
8: 172
9: 126
10: 3,84,126
11: 206,96,171
12: 65,283
13: 38,246
14: 280,4,167
15: 269,279,199,2

Midgard provinces 302-602
5: 541
6: 400
7: 326
8: 304,346
9: 570,590
10: 534,320
11: 566,399
12: 313,458,567
13: 458,442


I'm not sure what it proves, but it doesn't seem to be checking provinces in order. Nor does the number of events scale up as fast as I'd expect. I didn't test smaller numbers of provinces, but you get 2 events regularly and 3 occasionally with much smaller empires (30-40 provinces?) If each province was checked independently, until a cap was hit, I'd expect a 300 province maxed out luck/turmoil empire to be hitting the cap regularly.

I also have a hazy memory of one of the developers saying that events were driven by the capital scales, but I wasn't able to find the post again. It was a long time ago.

[Squirrelloid]

assuming independent province by province checks with neutral scales, a 300 province territory should have a .9^300 chance for each event not happening, which as you might imagine is vanishingly small. (10^-14)

Ok, so we need a new model. Chris's model doesn't have any effect for empire size, so that clearly isn't right.

thejeff, is that data listing provinces in the order the events happened?

[thejeff]

Yes, the order they were listed in the messages.

Do we know the base chance? We certainly don't know what it means.

At least by the end of that test most provinces were T3L3, which should have boosted the chances by 36% (Do we know if that is +36 to the base percent chance, or an increase of 36% of the base chance? I'd always assumed the former...)

I can try to run more turns. See if the data changes.

[Squirrelloid]

I'm assuming its a % increase in base chance, because adding 36% is very clearly too large.

My tests suggest a 10% chance of an event for each of 4 independently calculated events. The distribution of events i saw matched such a binomial distribution. Of course, I only tested with one province, so it does leave open how it works with more provinces.

[Finalgenesis]

From a design point of view, I would think that a diminishing effect on event frequency for additional province to be a reasonable design decision, along with some sort of cap. It looks like the event gen mechanic doesn't check for event province by province, but perhaps roll for whether an event happens, then roll where it occurs among your provinces, then select events up or down the event list base on local luck. The formula itself will probably account for province number as a factor in a diminishing formula, e.g. 4 rolls of "Occurence = 10% + (10% * (x/x+1))" where X is the # of province your have (disclaimer: this is not meant to guesstimate the actual formula, but show how a cap of 19.9999% event occurence in 4 checks might be implemented, along with adding in province # as a dimishing factor, the cap can easily be changed to other percentage).

It is also a reasonable mechanic for event gen formula may also make a 1st event more likely to occur then a 2nd event, though Squirreloid's testing seem to refute this.

Linear relationshop between event frequency and province # wouldn't make sense (Also refuted by thejeff's data, though more sample population would help as 10 turns of data is a bit low, it does however, show that something unintuitive is going on with event generation though)? We know that province # is likely factor from Squirreloid's test I think, as we do see a lot more then 36% event when we had more provinces, also Squirreloid have tested this for quite a few turns, so turn progression may not influence event chance (at least for a solo province). What other factor can account for thejeff's data where the event chance seem to pick up with no change in province #?

@thejeff
For your test, was your dominion spread covering all your provinces? Or was it just spreading out from capital? Or maybe turn # is a factor when there are mutliple provinces... Thanks for your testing data too thejeff, very handy.

[Finalgenesis]

Rereading my post above, I realized that unless you're my clone, it won't be easily understandable. I'll try to lay out my thought process in an easier to understand manner:

Event generation mechanic:

a) 4 single checks for event, roll once only (not once per prov)

-At current, this looks the most reasonable, as thejeff's testing likely show that the check is not once per prov (otherwise he'd max out 4 events a turn, or close). Likely the formula used includes province # as a factor somehow in a dimishing manner, as we can say with some confidence that we DO see more events when we had more province.

b) assign all events to random province

-Of those 4 checks, any success rolled (event generated) must be assigned to a province. Technically this should be random, though many have noticed that this tend to cluster.

c) once event assigned to province, apply luck

-So an event has been assigned to a province, luck have to apply somehow. I'm guessing the event is generated after the province has been selected. The province applies its local luck to the event roll through whatever formula.

thejeff's phenomenon:

This refers to why thejeff's testing seem to show that events occurence picks up as the turn progress. To be fair we need more data to say anything with any credibility, let's leave this aside for now. Something must be different during his t5-9 compared to t10-15 to account for the increased occurence, off the top of my head:

a) Turn #

Well obviously turn # is most visible, would turn progression be a factor in event generation? Squirreloid's testing seem to say otherwise, since his average event frq on a single province was 36% throughout without seeing thejeff phenomenon. However, it is remotely possible that turn # as a factor only kicks in when there is more then 1 province. I see this as unlikely but possible.

b) dominion

The other thing that could be different is the dominion, but I need to know whether thejeff's data had dominion spreading from Cap on T1 only before I can make any conjecture. Test with philosopher and temples may be revealing if so, maybe in thejeff's test scenario wall in dominion so it only occurs at capital, then letting it max or keeping it low to see, then maybe test if dominion being widespread changes anything.

c-z) ???

[Squirrelloid]

Except there are substantial problems with it checking for each event on a non-province-by-province basis. Namely, no obvious way you accrue more events as #provinces increases, and no way to factor in local scales. So i'm not sure your (a) is anywhere near certain - indeed, it would seem the evidence suggests against it.

Now, actual P(event) could actually be P(event|#provinces), as a decreasing function with respect to provinces. This seems a rather complicated model given what we know of JK's coding style, however. (I mean, the game uses a distance metric near manhattan metric because calculating real distance was too much processor power per calculation - clearly simple was better as far as JK was concerned). But we don't *know* unless someone wants to do some code-diving.

Until we determine a plausible mechanism for generating events, can we restrict ourselves to totally neutral dominion? Lets not complicate things before we have a good basic model to work with.

[Finalgenesis]

I thought it might be pretty simple to code in #province affecting event even if you're doing a non-province-by-province basis. something like the example I used 2 post back (I didn't put the example in the "clarified" post you read so you probably missed it):
event=10%+(20%*(x-1/x)) where x is province you have
to demonstrate a dimishing effect as thejeff's data might suggest. so 1 province = 4x 10% check, 2 provinces = 4x 20% check, 3 province = 4x 27% check ...etc with this random non-realistic example (it's a pretty inelegant sample formula), except there is obviously more factors in the formula then is present in this example, in order to account for anomalies for Jeff's results.

I agree though that nothing short of code diving is going to give us anything concrete to work with, so it's an excercise in futility at the end.

[Squirrelloid]

Oh, we can totally figure this out, or at least propose models consistent with data. But for that we need data!

[chrispedersen]

assuming independent province by province checks with neutral scales, a 300 province territory should have a .9^300 chance for each event not happening, which as you might imagine is vanishingly small. (10^-14)

Ok, so we need a new model. Chris's model doesn't have any effect for empire size, so that clearly isn't right.

thejeff, is that data listing provinces in the order the events happened?

I still don't get the criticism.

I'm suggesting first determine how many provinces get event checks. Then run each event check through a provinces event mask.
But I'll do some tests...

[Squirrelloid]

assuming independent province by province checks with neutral scales, a 300 province territory should have a .9^300 chance for each event not happening, which as you might imagine is vanishingly small. (10^-14)

Ok, so we need a new model. Chris's model doesn't have any effect for empire size, so that clearly isn't right.

thejeff, is that data listing provinces in the order the events happened?

I still don't get the criticism.

I'm suggesting first determine how many provinces get event checks. Then run each event check through a provinces event mask.
But I'll do some tests...

Ok, two things:

First, as thejeff pointed out, if you determine #events before you look province-by-province, then province scales have no effect on how likely an event is. Yet they clearly claim to do so.

Second, my point was if you generate #events first, you ignore #provinces. Yet there's certainly the perception that larger empires have more events (we need real data to actually confirm, but it does meet my anecdotal experience). At which point, generating #events first doesn't account for increasing average # of events based on number of provinces owned that doesn't result in obvious asymptotes or the like at some point. (And remember, JK's known algorithm work has already rejected x^2+y^2=z^2 as too complicated).

[chrispedersen]

ok; With 50 turns, 0 luck 0 luck -3 +3 4 territories
22, 27, 54, and 46 luck events

With 8 territories same scales
24 24 64 55 luck events.


A few observational data.

1. With over 100 turns run - there were never any turns with
ZERO luck events (after turn 1).
2. I watched various emigration events where pop was lost.
There were never any pop gains the same turn.
3. Four events occured to one nation once in both sample sizes.


Number distribution
With 4 territories
0,1,2,3,4
33,11,4,1
26,19.4
15.17.11.5.1
19,18,7,5



With 8 territories,
0 1 2 3 4
28,19,3,0
29,18,3,0
10,16,29,3,1
11,24,13,2

[Finalgenesis]

I also have a hazy memory of one of the developers saying that events were driven by the capital scales, but I wasn't able to find the post again. It was a long time ago.


First, as thejeff pointed out, if you determine #events before you look province-by-province, then province scales have no effect on how likely an event is. Yet they clearly claim to do so.

I think that it's not too impropable that the luck/turmoil effect on event frequency could be one of those things where either the capital or your pretender scale is used in the event generation formula rather then province-by-province check. This was something I forgot to put in my "clarified post"

[thejeff]

In my test, I didn't start with full dominion, so there is likely some lag, but did have dom10 and had used the map file to put a temple in every province, so it spread fast.

I can run more turns tonight. I was originally looking for province clustering not just numbers, so I had to actually check each event. Just getting the number of events will be faster.

[chrispedersen]

Looking at the data I generated, with 50 turns run on a size 4 empire and 50 turns run on a size 8 empire.

With neutral scales, the number of events did not scale between the empire size.

You have the same number of events happening on a size 4 nation, vs a size 8 nation.

Second, I believe the reasons the number of luck events increased so drastically (but not evenly) for +/- luck is because the luck scale increased the number of eligible events in their provinces.

I don't believe its a question of IF a luck event occurs, pick a random event in this territory.

I think its, IF a luck event occurs, check to see if each eligible event in a province occurs.


So, if as I believe there are up to four luck events, and each one has a check to see if it occurs - the actual chance of having an event =4* P(E)*P(EventinProvince)

So changing luck not only increases p(e) it also increases P(eip). This is the only way I can see to account for the doubling of events, and also the consistency that -luck increased the number events more than + luck. While they both may have increased the p(e), the increased the P(eip) unevenly due to the more possible unluck events than luck events.


Second, the same provinces were hit turn after turn with the same events.

Third, some events get turned on on certain turn progressions, 7,10,35, this has a slight dampening on the number of events per turn I posit in the early turns.

However, in the 4 lands test 34 events happened in the first 10 turns, 39 events occured in the last 10 turns.

In the 8 nation test, 34 events happened in the first 10 turn, 43happened in the last 10 turns.

[Finalgenesis]

Could there also be a cap on number of province affecting event generation frequency? After all, with only 1 province, you definitely see less then 34 events in 10 turns (from play observation not actual testing). Perhaps once you hit 10-20 provinces, any additional provinces no longer impact your event frequency.

[thejeff]

Wait, those numbers don't make sense.
34 events in 10 turns as the low end?
Averaging more than 3/turn?

In my test, I got 1 4 event turn and many 2 event turns.

If you're getting that many with neutral scales, something else is going on.

[chrispedersen]

Could there also be a cap on number of province affecting event generation frequency? After all, with only 1 province, you definitely see less then 34 events in 10 turns (from play observation not actual testing). Perhaps once you hit 10-20 provinces, any additional provinces no longer impact your event frequency.

I specifically chose 4 territories, so that if their was some kind of limit of only 1 P(e) event could be checked per province, that there would be enough provinces so that all 4
P(e) events could be expressed.

I am saying, and I think the evidence bears this out, that P(e) is not a function of the number of provinces.

By the way, the event table strongly suggests that if you have turmoil scales expressed in a province, that can be worthwhile to garrison troops in the province. The cost of the garrison is
is less than the likely cost of the barbarian events. Even better of course is to increase pd to a point where you dont need to worry about it - however that falls to gameplay, and the value of capital questions.

[chrispedersen]

Wait, those numbers don't make sense.
34 events in 10 turns as the low end?
Averaging more than 3/turn?

In my test, I got 1 4 event turn and many 2 event turns.

If you're getting that many with neutral scales, something else is going on.

I'm dealing with 4 nations, each with 4 provinces, at the low end. And 4 nations, each with 8 provinces at the high end.

And yes, the numbers dont' make sense if you think events are a function of # of provinces. I don't think that.

[militarist]

One of ways to check is number of possible events affects total number of events a player will have can be done by comparing 2 builds - one with magic2, another with magic or or drain1. Magic adds a lot of events.Luck1 also add events.

If it amount of event's doesn't depend on province count, then what...If you have capital with good luck scales /dominion and conquered a province, your overall luck becomes lower until luck scale in that province achieves the level you had in capital?

[chrispedersen]

Militarist: my last test had four nations

Two with 0 luck
one with +3 luck
one with -3 luck

My next test (date uncertain) will be

Two nations with 0 order
one nation with 3 order
one nation with 3 turmoil

I suspect that this will show reduced events for the +3 order, and increased events for the turmoil.

now, for the +0 nations, 94% of the time, either 0 or 1 event occured. I don't think that any P(eip) results could surpress P(e) that much. Could be wrong.

for the luck nations +/-3 it clearly resulted in more luck events. The number of zero events was pretty constant at 20%.

[thejeff]

Wait, those numbers don't make sense.
34 events in 10 turns as the low end?
Averaging more than 3/turn?

In my test, I got 1 4 event turn and many 2 event turns.

If you're getting that many with neutral scales, something else is going on.

I'm dealing with 4 nations, each with 4 provinces, at the low end. And 4 nations, each with 8 provinces at the high end.

And yes, the numbers dont' make sense if you think events are a function of # of provinces. I don't think that.

Oh, 34 events over 4 nations. 8-9 events/nation over 10 turns. That fits my expectations a lot better.

[thejeff]

Just another complication to add to the question:

How do events in independent provinces fit into this?

[Finalgenesis]

I will admit to not being able to fully understand this. So all tests below were with 4 nations each? When you say 22,27,54,46 luck events, you mean for the 4 nations seperately over 50 turns? For the ones below, 0,1,2,3,4 are events and the 4 rows are for 4 nations? the 26, 19.4 is that over 50 turns 26 had no event, 19 had 1 event and 4 had 2 events?

ok; With 50 turns, 0 luck 0 luck -3 +3 4 territories
22, 27, 54, and 46 luck events

With 8 territories same scales
24 24 64 55 luck events.


A few observational data.

1. With over 100 turns run - there were never any turns with
ZERO luck events (after turn 1).
2. I watched various emigration events where pop was lost.
There were never any pop gains the same turn.
3. Four events occured to one nation once in both sample sizes.


Number distribution
With 4 territories
0,1,2,3,4
33,11,4,1
26,19.4
15.17.11.5.1
19,18,7,5



With 8 territories,
0 1 2 3 4
28,19,3,0
29,18,3,0
10,16,29,3,1
11,24,13,2

[chrispedersen]

Just another complication to add to the question:

How do events in independent provinces fit into this?

well, it isn't 8/nation.

For example, the +o nations got 20 events, the +-3 nations got 56
over the first and last 10.

As for independent provinces - beats me. But I doubt the number of events varies if you have computer controlled vs indy, vs players.

[chrispedersen]

I will admit to not being able to fully understand this. So all tests below were with 4 nations each? When you say 22,27,54,46 luck events, you mean for the 4 nations seperately over 50 turns? For the ones below, 0,1,2,3,4 are events and the 4 rows are for 4 nations? the 26, 19.4 is that over 50 turns 26 had no event, 19 had 1 event and 4 had 2 events?


1. No. 50 turns were done for 4 nations with 4 provinces.
50 turns were done for 4 nations with 8 provinces.
2. correct.
3. No. In the second data I am presenting the number distribution. Nation 2 had 26 turns with 0 events, 19 with 1, 4 with 2.

[militarist]

ChrisP, the idea behind taking M3 is connected with one of my previous posts:
"One more interesting question. There is a number of good events which can happen with you theoretically. For example, there are many which require Magic 2 (or at least Magic 2) scale. With Magic lower then M2, you have shorter list of possible good events. Does it mean you will have less good events? Or just it means that you will have the same number of events but from shorter list?"

Edi says that to maximize effect from luck you should take at least magic 2 which switches on many events. The question which is interesting - If I take M2 in comparison with M0, will I have MORE events (as the list of good events is longer), or I will just BETTER events but amount will be the same. It's a big difference. In first case taking M3 could have some sense if you take Luck 3 even in multiplayer. In second - taking M3 adds much less value, as just replaces some cheap cash events by items
which can be worthless.

I didn't see anywhere any mentioning that there is such a thing as basis probability , which is not connected with amount of events possible with current scales.

Answer to this question is also valuable for understanding - what is better - to take one more growth scale of shift luck from luck 0 to luck 1. As luck 1 also switches on some events. And if these events just replace standard events, that the value of such increase is not so dramatic then if taking luck 1 would increase the probability of event by expanding the list of possible events.

[chrispedersen]

Actually, I did an analysis (and posted it) of the events, and death and magic are the two most relevent effects when you turn on luck.

turning on additional events is what I'm talking about in P(eip).
It seems to me there HAS to be an element tied to the province mask. Otherwise +3 luck and -3 Luck would be more likely to have the same values - and they dont.

[thejeff]

Thinking about how inefficient the "check for each possible event in a province" code would be, started me thinking about how else you could do it.

Seriously, you'd have to build a list of possible events for every province you wanted to check, they'd all be potentially different and then generate a random number and check against the probability for that province.
Why go to that trouble when you could just select 1 from the list? But then you'd still have to build the list and you'd always get one, which doesn't seem to match the results. OK, what if you just pick one from the full list and then check to see if it's valid for that province. If it is, great, if not you could give up and have no event or try again a limit number of times.

That seems to be a better mechanism for what chris is proposing, though I'm not sure if it makes any difference in results.

I still think there's some effect we're missing for the number of events, linked to empire size or possibly turn number.

We know some events that are linked to scales, but is there a complete list? Knowing which scale setting had the most and least possible events would help testing this.

[chrispedersen]

Thinking about how inefficient the "check for each possible event in a province" code would be, started me thinking about how else you could do it.

Seriously, you'd have to build a list of possible events for every province you wanted to check, they'd all be potentially different and then generate a random number and check against the probability for that province.
Why go to that trouble when you could just select 1 from the list? But then you'd still have to build the list and you'd always get one, which doesn't seem to match the results. OK, what if you just pick one from the full list and then check to see if it's valid for that province. If it is, great, if not you could give up and have no event or try again a limit number of times.

That seems to be a better mechanism for what chris is proposing, though I'm not sure if it makes any difference in results.

I still think there's some effect we're missing for the number of events, linked to empire size or possibly turn number.

We know some events that are linked to scales, but is there a complete list? Knowing which scale setting had the most and least possible events would help testing this.

But jeff, a lot of this is what I said. Make a list of all available luck events in a province. this is what I call the province mask

now, you could just make a full listing of all eligible events and then roll randomly against the list. number of provinces would then not figure into it at all

The question still becomes - how do you generate the number of times to roll against the list.

Whereas, if you check All of a provinces random events, you would see what we see empirically happening - much more events for luck +-3.

[chrispedersen]

So again, with the same nations, same cbm and the same luck scales 0 0 -3 +3
this time I added +3 order to all nations.

Strong results, again. Over 50 turns:

6,3,26,28 luck events

So the order cancelled out luck, even though luck was suppsed to have a stronger effect.

Personally considering how JK did % chances on magic paths, I feel sure that the addition or subtraction of chance is just added or subtracted from the base chance.

It seems to me, that this give us the base for testing.
Write a mod such that you increase the effect of order until such time as you no longer get any events.


However if you start with p=20, and then deduct 15 for order you'd get about 1/4 the events.

likewise with p=20 and o order +3/-3 luck would give a 41% luck chance - slightly more than doubling.

I again noticed fewer events in the start.

[Finalgenesis]

At least that part is intuitive:

When it says +15% events, it really means +15% events....

That's good to know.

Throw in some magic +3 in there will you :P, that's the next big one I think.

[thejeff]

But jeff, a lot of this is what I said. Make a list of all available luck events in a province. this is what I call the province mask

now, you could just make a full listing of all eligible events and then roll randomly against the list. number of provinces would then not figure into it at all

The question still becomes - how do you generate the number of times to roll against the list.

Whereas, if you check All of a provinces random events, you would see what we see empirically happening - much more events for luck +-3.

I think one of us is misunderstanding the other. Probably my fault, since I was describing how I came up with it as much as the theory itself.

Here's how it works under this theory:
First roll the chance of each of the 4 possible events, based on the capital (or pretender?) scales.
For each event generated, pick a random province. In each province pick a random event off the complete list. If the event is not possible, given the provinces scales, terrain and any other conditions, stop. No event happens. (Possibly, reroll a limited number of times.)

Thus, the more events your scales unlock, the more likely you'll actually get an event.
This should get similar effect to checking each possible event in a province with much less work and avoid some of the weirder side effects, such as events earlier in the list being more common than ones later in the list.

You get many more events for Luck +/-3 both do to the increase in chance of generating an event to start with and the increased number of events unlocked. I don't know enough about the number of events possible at different scales to guess how big the second factor is.

Does that make it more clear? Or am I still missing something?


I still think there's more going on. I'm not convinced that number of provinces doesn't play a role. I'll try to test a few more different size nations when I have the chance.
I'm also not sure about the base chances being based on capital scales. Possibly testable using 3L3T and skeptics to hold down capital dominion?

Also terrain plays a role in this. At the very least some events are only possible on land and others in the water. If there are less water events, then you should get less events in water provinces than elsewhere. This may be easier to test than events in different scales since terrain stays consistent and you don't have to worry about dominion spread.

[chrispedersen]

But jeff, a lot of this is what I said. Make a list of all available luck events in a province. this is what I call the province mask

now, you could just make a full listing of all eligible events and then roll randomly against the list. number of provinces would then not figure into it at all

The question still becomes - how do you generate the number of times to roll against the list.

Whereas, if you check All of a provinces random events, you would see what we see empirically happening - much more events for luck +-3.

Here's how it works under this theory:
First roll the chance of each of the 4 possible events, based on the capital (or pretender?) scales.
For each event generated, pick a random province. In each province pick a random event off the complete list. If the event is not possible, given the provinces scales, terrain and any other conditions, stop. No event happens. (Possibly, reroll a limited number of times.)

Thus, the more events your scales unlock, the more likely you'll actually get an event.



Ok, we agree on most of this. The difference is that I suggested choosing an event from a tailored list for the province
you suggested pulling a random event and then checking if its applicable. I mentioned that as a possibility as well.

Essentially, logically, this means

Generate # of luck events.
Generate event for each luck event
Randomly choose province.
See if province allows event.

We know that JK likes bit masks, so the last step would just be XORing the event bit mask with the province mask and if true applying the event.



This should get similar effect to checking each possible event in a province with much less work and avoid some of the weirder side effects, such as events earlier in the list being more common than ones later in the list.



I think thats a weekness, because if you take luck -3 and turmoil -3 you are going to get NEVER ENDING hordes of barbarians.

If you take Death 3 and misfortune 3 - you get never ending hordes of plague events.

It can't work this way - because the generation of the event would not generate all these barbarian events, death events.


You get many more events for Luck +/-3 both do to the increase in chance of generating an event to start with and the increased number of events unlocked. I don't know enough about the number of events possible at different scales to guess how big the second factor is.



If you look at the results for Luck 3 vs luck -3, the both should have the same number of events. Luck -3 had 20%(?) more events. The second factor (unlocking events) has to be huge.

Also, if you look at luck 0 vs luck -3 - they are generating 2.5 times the number of events. The luck difference is supposed to be 21% more events - but it is 250%.



I'm also not sure about the base chances being based on capital scales. Possibly testable using 3L3T and skeptics to hold down capital dominion?



Well, I think some useful tests are:

1. Make a mode that increases the order effect. Find out at what level you cease to get luck events.
This will allow us to isolate P(e).

Once you isolate P(e) you can check what effect dominion has. Personally I'm fairly sure that dominion is only relevent to determine the luck scale in a province.

2. Do a check with 1 province. Use turmoil 3 luck -3.
Examine the maxium number of events that occur Turns 1-10, Turns 11-20, 21-30, 30+

I'm pretty sure that you will see 4 events if you capture for 40 turns post turn 30.
And I'm bummed for not getting a single thanks for all these tests!!!

[thejeff]

I think thats a weekness, because if you take luck -3 and turmoil -3 you are going to get NEVER ENDING hordes of barbarians.

If you take Death 3 and misfortune 3 - you get never ending hordes of plague events.

It can't work this way - because the generation of the event would not generate all these barbarian events, death events.


You're saying that events do seem to be weighted towards one end of the list? I'd expect that to manifest more as some events being more rare than they should be. Events early in the list will be more common, but only slightly so. To get the effects we see, P(eip) would have to be small enough that it makes it through the whole list fairly regularly, which means that any weighting towards the front of the list would be small. The cumulative effect might be large by the end, but still hard to detect.




If you look at the results for Luck 3 vs luck -3, the both should have the same number of events. Luck -3 had 20%(?) more events. The second factor (unlocking events) has to be huge.



Also, if you look at luck 0 vs luck -3 - they are generating 2.5 times the number of events. The luck difference is supposed to be 21% more events - but it is 250%.


The first seems very weird to me. Without knowing more about how many events are possible at each scale, I'd hesitate to draw any conclusions from it.

The second may not be strange. If the bonus from luck scales is just added to the base chance, then it wouldn't be 21% more events. Assuming 10% base chance for the sake of argument, 21% more events would be 10% *1.21 = 12.1% chance
Straight addition gives you 10%+21% = 31%, a 310% increase.


Well, I think some useful tests are:

1. Make a mode that increases the order effect. Find out at what level you cease to get luck events.
This will allow us to isolate P(e).

Once you isolate P(e) you can check what effect dominion has. Personally I'm fairly sure that dominion is only relevent to determine the luck scale in a province.

2. Do a check with 1 province. Use turmoil 3 luck -3.
Examine the maxium number of events that occur Turns 1-10, Turns 11-20, 21-30, 30+

I'm pretty sure that you will see 4 events if you capture for 40 turns post turn 30.
And I'm bummed for not getting a single thanks for all these tests!!!

Thanks for the tests :)

I've got a couple of things I want to try as well. I'm not as convinced as you are that number of provinces isn't a factor, so I want to run some tests with the scales I used before on smaller empires.

I'd also like to try something with a water nation, since there should be fewer events available underwater.

I really want a list of events & scales.

[militarist]

"I really want a list of events & scales."

But there is an Edi's DB of events, you can find it easily.

[thejeff]

I knew I'd seen something somewhere, but it didn't seem to be linked anywhere.
I didn't think to look in the obvious place for any documentation, Edi's signature.

Thanks.

And thanks Edi for putting it together.

[militarist]

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=45185

[Finalgenesis]

Don't brigand / shark event seem a lot more prevalent then other events of the same frequency mask (in Edi's event list)? hmmm... observor bias?

[chrispedersen]

No.

You're probably playing with scales that allow the brigands/sharks to occur more regulary.

I get barbarians all the time, because I prefer sloth.

[Lingchih]

Odd events testing the latest True Firebird in the latest EDM test.

First two turns, while it sat in the cap, good events.

Next three turns, no events in the cap.

Next turn, moved it out of the cap, and got a good event in the prov where I sent it.

Next turn, moved it back into the cap. No events.

Next two turns, while it sat in the cap, no events.

This is all based on a luck 1 scale.

My only conclusion from all this, is that your luck taps out after a few turns, or perhaps more, due to the vagaries of the Dom3 random number generator.

*An interesting side note. (RNG) is apparently forbidden on the forums. I had to spell out the full name to get it through the filter.

[chrispedersen]

Thats hardly surprising Ling....
P(e) is probably betweeen 10-20. Thats before event masks for the territory.

Go with a lady of fortune, luck 1, order three you will still see LOTS of turns without luck events.

[thejeff]

I finally had a chance to come back to this and run a few more tests:
Looking at the relationship between number of provinces and number of events

T3L3 Dom10 pretender over 30 turns
2 provinces:
Nation1: 39
Nation2: 39

30 provinces:
Nation1: 57
Nation2: 54

300 provinces:
Nation1: 66
Nation2: 62


That looks strongly to me like number of provinces matters, especially on the low end.

[Finalgenesis]

Thanks for the data TJ

Oh here's a Void summon data for Ryleth lovers, (definitely not enough turns to conclude on anything):

MA Ryleth over 30 turns
a) only summoner(3) is used, priest replaced on lvlup
b) Summon begins on 3rd turn
test 1: 1 order 3 luck 3 magic 3 growth 3 cold
test 2: 3 hot, all other baseline

Test 1: 8 success, 15 spawns total
Test 2: 7 success, 11 spawns total

I can post spawn types on request.

Quality of spawn shows no correlation, all over the place. High summon skill seems to be most important in determining quality. Scales don't seem to have a noticable impact on void summon base on this tiny testing population.

[chrispedersen]

I finally had a chance to come back to this and run a few more tests:
Looking at the relationship between number of provinces and number of events

T3L3 Dom10 pretender over 30 turns
2 provinces:
Nation1: 39
Nation2: 39

30 provinces:
Nation1: 57
Nation2: 54

300 provinces:
Nation1: 66
Nation2: 62


That looks strongly to me like number of provinces matters, especially on the low end.


I don't see how you can say this. I wish you had done 50 turns, so we could directly compare with my results. However adding 2/3 the events (30 turns * 2/3 = 50 turns) gives you 62 events on your size two nations - which is *more* than my size 4 nations, by about 5.

Also how did you start with 300 province nations? (starting methodology matters)

Finally, you went from 30 provinces to 300 provinces a factor of 10 increase, and only got an 18% increase in the number of events.

This suggests pretty strongly to me that it *isn't* a matter of of f(#). It looks to me like it is merely that with more provinces, that you will run into more provinces with bigger province terrain masks.

Interesting test would be to dump 10 lady of fortunes in a province and see what happens.

[thejeff]

I was using T3L3, largely because that's what I used on my earlier 300 province test. That does mean it's not directly comparable to your tests.

In both the 30 & 300 province tests, I used map commands to assign provinces to both nations and to put a temple in every province. That's the fastest way I could think of to boost dominion and scales with it. If you can think of a faster way, I'd love to hear it. Events seem to be scarcest in the first 10 turns or so. I'd like to see if that's just scale spreading or something more hardcoded. I think there are a handful of events restricted in the first few turns, but I didn't think it would be that big an effect.

I don't think that more provinces with bigger province terrain masks makes sense. At least not if we're still thinking you start by picking 0 to 4 provinces and checking for events in them. I could see that having a large effect in the small tests, where you might have a province with (terrain/population?) that restricts many events. But scales should have been similar in most provinces and those unlock the largest number of events right?

I suppose I could try modifying a map to have only one terrain type and rerun them against that, but it doesn't seem very useful.

The province number effect is obviously not linear and I don't have an idea for how it's generated, but I'm not sure how I can demonstrate it more clearly.

[sector24]

Something I noticed. Chris, when you were determining whether number of provinces affected the number of events, you used a territory size of 4 vs 8.

ok; With 50 turns, 0 luck 0 luck -3 +3 4 territories
22, 27, 54, and 46 luck events

With 8 territories same scales
24 24 64 55 luck events.

This was clearly (to me) not a test of whether terrority size affects the number of events. Simply not enough provinces to provide any meaningful results. Then when a test comes along using larger number of provinces that actually might provide an accurate test of the hypothesis, you bash it. But you bash it by comparing it to your 4 vs 8 province test! Everyone else can make up their own minds, but I find a significant lack of objectivity here.

[chrispedersen]

Something I noticed. Chris, when you were determining whether number of provinces affected the number of events, you used a territory size of 4 vs 8.

ok; With 50 turns, 0 luck 0 luck -3 +3 4 territories
22, 27, 54, and 46 luck events

With 8 territories same scales
24 24 64 55 luck events.

This was clearly (to me) not a test of whether terrority size affects the number of events. Simply not enough provinces to provide any meaningful results. Then when a test comes along using larger number of provinces that actually might provide an accurate test of the hypothesis, you bash it. But you bash it by comparing it to your 4 vs 8 province test! Everyone else can make up their own minds, but I find a significant lack of objectivity here.

I certainly do not bash the test, and in fact welcome more tests.
And I wouldn't mind being proved wrong on it either.

I certainly don't *mind* if there is an alternate mechanism.

I certainly have no problem with the data,
However having a 1000% increase in the number of provinces yielding an 18% increase in the number of events does not qualify as support saying that events are a function of # of territories. IF we are going to get a valid model here, I think we have to poke holes in all theories.

For curiousity sake, I wonder why do you think that a 4 territory vs an 8 territory is insufficient to determine meaningful results? Especially over 50 turns?

[thejeff]

Well, it's obvious from experience and a casual look at the tests that any relationship isn't linear. If it was, either you'd get almost no events with 1 province or you'd max out at 4 a turn well under 300 provinces.
That's partly what I was trying to confirm.

One potential issue with the 4 vs 8 test is that, assuming your theory about terrain masks limiting the number of events holds, it's much more likely that the smaller number won't be a representative sample of terrain types.
If you're testing for the effects of number of provinces, number of turns is less important. Going for a big difference magnifies any effects so they're more easily noticeable. If the effect is a 1.18 multiplier for every 10-fold increase, a simple doubling might not be noticeable in the random noise.
I'd done the 300 first for other reasons, then tried the 2. When I found so many less events in 2, I tried 30 to see if it would fall neatly in between, which it did.

And, frankly, if it's repeatable, a 18% increase in events for a 10 fold increase in province is precisely a function based on number of territories. What's needed to confirm it is more tests. See if the pattern holds. It's quite possible the randomness is so high, it will be hard to pick any actual meaning without huge amounts of data. And since there isn't any easy way to automate this, it's boring, and I'm not being paid, I'm not planning to run hundreds of tests.

[militarist]

It's also possible that it's linear, just Capital is counted as 10-20 provinces for all calculations.

[chrispedersen]

50 turns.

#turmoilevents set to 20.
Nation 1: O3P3 9 events
Nation 2: O3P3 6 events
Nation 3: 03P3 4 events
Controls:
Nation 4: -P3 5 events
Nation 5: P3 22 events.

One territory.

With turmoil events set to 20, this should be a -60% chance of events.

I have no explantion for nation 4, either.

[chrispedersen]

5 nations turmoil events set to 20
50 turns.

8 territories.

ermor O3 5 events
Mar o0 30 events
Saur 03 5 rvents
Agartha o3 5 events
Kailas o0 31 events

Oh, and dominions crashed with turmoil events set to 25.