Thoughts on making "luck" equally attractive

[Chris_Byler]

It seems to me that the simplest way to adjust order/luck would be to raise the event per turn cap to an amount that is unlikely to be hit in the competitive stage of any game - say 50 events per nation per turn. The non-scaling of luck/misfortune to large empires is no longer a problem; large lucky empires could potentially get several free buildings a turn along with a few dozen free units, substantial extra gem income etc. Large unlucky empires, on the other hand... well, let's just say it's a good thing you have that extra gold from order.

Replacing the militia event with X gold worth of some national troop (hopefully a reasonably decent one) would be a nice change, too. I'd much rather have 20 free huskarls, city guards, marverni nobles, or hastatii than 40 militia - and that's just the mundane troops.

Even a decent indy troop would be better than militia.

[Coldshard]

Chris_Byler said:
It seems to me that the simplest way to adjust order/luck would be to raise the event per turn cap to an amount that is unlikely to be hit in the competitive stage of any game - say 50 events per nation per turn. The non-scaling of luck/misfortune to large empires is no longer a problem; large lucky empires could potentially get several free buildings a turn along with a few dozen free units, substantial extra gem income etc. Large unlucky empires, on the other hand... well, let's just say it's a good thing you have that extra gold from order.

Replacing the militia event with X gold worth of some national troop (hopefully a reasonably decent one) would be a nice change, too. I'd much rather have 20 free huskarls, city guards, marverni nobles, or hastatii than 40 militia - and that's just the mundane troops.

Even a decent indy troop would be better than militia.

Yes! I actually view getting random militia and such to be a bad event, even if it is listed as a good one. A bunch of guys who arent good at fighting appear without a commander likely several provinces away from a front line or any commander that could go pick them up.. so basically it is just an income drain until I can waste turns picking them up and getting them killed

[Xietor]

i wonder if the event cap, like the unit cap, is one we have to live with though. Other solutions may have to be sought.

And I think having 50 lucky events per turn would be way overpowered. heh.

[quantum_mechani]

One thing that has not been mentioned is a particularly nasty side effect of the event limit. If you own significantly more provinces than your dominion spreads to, your luck scale bonus can become almost negligible (bad events from the outer provs override whatever good you'd get). So that puts yet another burden luck- to reap your benefit at all you have to get your dominion everywhere. This is as opposed to order where you are doing fine as long as you get it over your population centers.

[Xietor]

That is a another very good point QM.

And one that does not necessarily have to be addressed through the event cap limit, however. If you have luck 3, maybe weight can be given 1st to provinces in which you actually have the highest luck. that may be complicated.

Or maybe your provinces that have any positive dominion, can be treated as having your max luck in them. And enemy luck can be coded not to count against your own event limit.


Not having a clue about coding, i have no idea about the scale of difficulty any of these items presents.

[JimMorrison]

On mercenaries - It would be fun if a "mercenary" company were formed around each nation, using one of their actual randomly appearing heroes as the leader, and a thematically sensible contingent of high end troops from that nation. At game start, each nation IN the game would have their company turned off, all the nations NOT in the game, would exist in that form, as "adventuring warriors from a far off land".

On event cap - Ultimately I think this is the #1 thing that NEEDS to be done. Misf2-3 players consistently state that the idea is to grow so fast anyways, that you meet and exceed that limit as early as possible, thus your relative gains are past the fulcrum of statistical balance for most of the game. I am not so sure about 50 events, but if the cap were even raised to 10 events, it would greatly alter the overall perspective on Luck scale, I'm sure, and find it not only more competitive in larger maps, but more enjoyable to play with. If it were possible to cap "territory loss" events at the same time, that would be nice though..... Say on a 400 province map, 5 players left in contention with ~80 provinces apiece, someone suddenly gets 10 barbarians deep in his back territory where he hasn't been producing troops - ironically sieging his nearest castles in the area..... Luck needs to be made more relevant, without suddenly having the power to decisively win or lose the game due to 1 turn worth of completely unexpected events (I know, if you have 80 territories, you should be able to afford some PD, but what if you are Nief or a monkey nation? then what! ).


Oh and Xietor, you do know they finally raised the unit cap? So don't lose hope yet.

[kasnavada]

I think the same that testing 9 provinces for 30 turns should be equal to having 270 provinces in a single turn. That would "balance" luck better than anything else...

The single problem with having 50 events a turn would be your lab size actually. Since it's limited to 50 pieces and that random events happen after forging you will lose some of the items on a big map. But some people already lose item on a large map because their construction needs exceed 50 item / turn anyway, so, sooner or later it will have to be made bigger as well.

Some of the good events that actually are not good like the militia have been changed : you get fewer and fewer militia these days, actually most of the time you get national troops instead, so it's not completly useless.

And the population grows events should be far more numerous too... there is about a dozen spell and bad event that reduce population and AFAIK only one that rise it.

[MaxWilson]

What makes you think it's a cap instead of sublinear growth?

-Max