Order vs. Luck in End Game

[Cheezeninja]

I think luck should just be made to matter for alot more small little things that add up to a big benefit. The benefits of Order are and should be obvious, but luck should do some more obscure stuff, like maybe if you had luck 3 in a province you would get 3 extra random magic levels for the purpose of searching for sites, or armies travelling through a province where you had high luck and they didn't would suffer a penalty in finding supplies, or you would get random attribute bonus's for your units if you had a battle in a province where you had high luck and dominion. Stuff like that. Or maybe it could improve blood-hunting alot, and misfortune could make it alot harder. The possibilities are finite, but there's still alot. =)

[Endoperez]

Small change of adding +1 for Attack-stat of a sacred unit in friendly dominion, made for every hit independently. I don't know if that would be enough, or how much it would slow the game down.

[PvK]

Well if it's luck, it shouldn't be a constant effect. It should just occasional flukes in your favor.

PvK

[Endoperez]

I, too, think that raising or altogether removing the limit of events would be nice. Maybe it could be limited to the amount of provinces you have. I have few ideas of my own, too.

New events:
One of your provinces is searched for magic sites (one path and first level only) - national limits would make sense, but it works even without them.

If a province has a lab and a mage, give that province summoning/ forging/ enchantment etc. bonus for that one turn only. Stars and Planets combine to focus Astral power to that province or something...

And small changes to existing events:

Making the amount of gems found a random, open-ended roll.

Giving you some free sacred troops of your nation, amount dependant on power. That is, Flagellants limited to Marignon only, other nations would get Heart Companions, Vanir, _a_ Niefel Giant, Wardens etc... More thematic, but for some nations a really nice bonus too.

[Chris Byler]

I'd like to see more diversity in scale selection and I think that the Order/Luck issue is too one-sided at present.

The most *visible* way to improve luck would be to remove the event cap (or greatly raise it, say 20 events/turn maximum). But if that isn't done (and maybe even if it is), I'd like to see luck have subtle pervasive effects on lots of things.

For example, when a check is made to see if stealthy units are caught, the province's luck or misfortune dominion is applied as a modifier to the patrollers' chances. Luck could also affect patrolling for unrest - you just happened to stumble across that bandit camp.

I also like Cheezeninja's idea of having luck affect blood hunting - after all, blood hunting is highly *random*, and even a skilled mage sometimes *just happens* to find many good blood slaves, or to find no blood slaves.

But I think the best solution is to remove the event cap, or raise it enough that there could be enough events per turn to have a significant impact on even a large, late-game empire (which doesn't really care about getting 25 militia or 3 magic gems). The negative synergy between Order and Luck is a neat idea - but Luck doesn't provide nearly enough benefits to make it a competitive option.

Improving Luck would also indirectly strengthen themes that are forced to take Luck (Last of the Tuatha) or Turmoil (Spring & Autumn, Barbarian Kings), or that benefit from Luck or Turmoil in other ways (standard Pangaea, anything with a Lord of the Wild pretender, anything that expects to use Cross Breeding much).

And if Luck starts to affect patrolling and blood hunting, blood nations might want to take the Luck/Turmoil route - particularly Mictlan, with its sacred low upkeep blood mages and worthless national troops, leading to an almost total dependence on (mostly blood) summons. Right now it's better to take Order/Misfortune and buy more priests to hunt with - but if Misfortune weakens your blood hunting while Luck strengthens it, the reverse might be true. I think that would be interesting and cool and lead to more tradeoffs in god design - because designing a god shouldn't be easy or simple.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
I also like Cheezeninja's idea of having luck affect blood hunting - after all, blood hunting is highly *random*, and even a skilled mage sometimes *just happens* to find many good blood slaves, or to find no blood slaves.

Blood hunting is not highly random, it is quite consistent for blood 2 mages of blood 1 mages with a SDR. I would hate to cripple blood nations by forcing them to take neutral or positive luck in order to maintain a blood slave supply.

[Jondifool]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

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Originally posted by Chris Byler:
I also like Cheezeninja's idea of having luck affect blood hunting - after all, blood hunting is highly *random*, and even a skilled mage sometimes *just happens* to find many good blood slaves, or to find no blood slaves.

Blood hunting is not highly random, it is quite consistent for blood 2 mages of blood 1 mages with a SDR. I would hate to cripple blood nations by forcing them to take neutral or positive luck in order to maintain a blood slave supply.

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well well is it just me or ...
or is there other here finding it odd that a provins hunted down for its virgins could be somehow related to positive luck.

It would absolute make more sense to let possitive bloodhunting numbers be related to misfortune!

If the provinse is affeckted by luck , i would expect virgins to escape and their fathers to kill the hunter!

Offcause such a modifier would need a lot of balance considering! but it would make sense to open up for more random events then.

And offcause there then should be the option to sacrifice slaves to reduce number of random events, or lessen their effeckt.

Like offering blood to get on good terms with fate and all the natural disasters that a high misfortune number could get then!
And it does sound a little more historical right to me that it should be easyer to find blood slaves when there is a need (from misfortune induced natural disasters) that even the peasants can see.

[ May 16, 2004, 20:34: Message edited by: Jondifool ]