Please advise: can misfortune change on its own?
 

I received this email from a player in a game I'm hosting, saying that his home province has a misfortune of -2. Can misfortune change like this, on its own? What do other hosts do in a case like this?

Thank you
Merry
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"I'm facing a big problem in the game.

I didn't notice it at the beginning. Just this Last turn.

My home province has a misfortune of -2.

Now I went back and recreated my god the using the same parameters for castle, dominion and magic. as I had at the outset. My
misfortune would be 0.

Now, in the first few turns I've had three separate misfortunes take place.

Is it possible for a provinces misfortune level to change like that?

Could my set up have gotten screwed up in the beginning?

Could it just be bad luck that right at the outset I could have suffered such a dramatic change?

In any case, I don't see how I can ever be competitive in the game.

I have almost no income and a lot of turmoil.

I hate to ask for a restart, but since I don't think the game would be worth playing for me this way, I'll have to turn it over to the
computer to run.

Re: Please advise: can misfortune change on its o
 

Baleful star and the event with the same effect move the luck scale to misfortune 3.

Re: Please advise: can misfortune change on its o
 

Thanks for the (quick!) advice. But, this is turn #3, so I don't think that can be the explanation in this case, can it?

Re: Please advise: can misfortune change on its o
 

It should go back to normal over time though, right?

Re: Please advise: can misfortune change on its o
 

Of course, if you took turmoil, then events are very common. With neutral luck, half of them are bad. Once the baleful star event happens, you'll get even more events as your luck scale got more extreme.

Re: Please advise: can misfortune change on its o
 

Yes.

Re: Please advise: can misfortune change on its o
 

What do hosts typically do if, in this case, someone gets a very unlucky break like this early in the game? Just declare a mulligan? Ask people to muscle on through? Any better solution? (Any way host can give gold or something to the player to compensate?)

Re: Please advise: can misfortune change on its o
 

I believe that mulligans are only given on things that are the fault of the map - for instance, several maps can leave land nations on islands, or on peninsulas with only 1 or 2 land neighbors. Those are worth mulligans, as they are totally screwed up things that aren't the result of a player choice.

But on the other paw - events changing dominion, even to Misfortune 3, are generally the result of the player choosing high Misfortune, Luck, or Turmoil. Sucks to be them (sucked to be me, in a number of games http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ) but it's the result of their pretender choices.

No mulligan, in my opinion. Mulligans / starting over should only be the result of a very screwed up start cause by the map, not by the players.

Re: Please advise: can misfortune change on its o
 

Depends. If one player suffers from barbarian hordes (or, even better, those evil knights), a temple and a lab burndown during the first four turns, I'd be all for a mulligan. That game is certainly over for him.

From everything else, even only two of those events, there's a comeback.

I usually take order 2 luck 3 or order 3 luck 2 to prevent these things from happening. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif No, really, I do.

Re: Please advise: can misfortune change on its o
 

In a game I am playing, I took misfortune 3. In the first 15 turns or so, I got 2 knight attacks (one in the capitol) and 2 barbarian revolts. I also got two vengeful witches as well as an earthquake killing 1/4 of my home population and the temple. This was followed by losing 1/3 population in my capitol to flooding. My home province is now down to about half the people it started with.

Bad luck? Yes, very much so. With order 3, this is very extreme. But I am the one who selected misfortune 3. Nobody forced me to do it. So, I live with my actions and fight on. I was not the first eliminated either, as 3 people are already dead in the game.

I certainly am unlikely to win at this point, but I would never dream of asking for a mulligan.

I have another game I took misfortune 3 and didn't have anywhere near this many bad things happen. But I did learn my lesson. I will take misfortune 2 only from now on, for this seems not near as bad.

Luck is a waste of pretender points unless you take a forced turmoil scale like the Pans, or a forced luck like Man Tuatha, or are Ermor. Take order 3 and misfortune 2 most of the time, and that works quite well.