Thoughts on making "luck" equally attractive

[Endoperez]

Chris_Byler said:
Given the effect of enemy luck, unlucky events that strike directly at an army in the field would actually help a lucky nation defend its dominion from invaders

This only works in practice if the really bad events require Misfortune, or at least are prevented in lucky provinces.
As an example, something that would destroy magic items is extremely dangerous, if you consider the investment some items represent. If it's a bad event that requires Drain, nations that, in theory, will encounter it most often are Misfortune nation with commanders under Drain, e.g. in Ulmish lands. In practice, it might be that nations that nations that choose Drain are under the threat of losing key items from the very beginning, and actually suffer the event far more often than those who are under Drain for just the short while they spend in the conquest.

Luck should protect you from the nastiest events, because otherwise Luck nations may meet them more often than Order/Misfortune nations.

[MaxWilson]

I like the idea of natural disaster events that survival scales protect against. Sounds thematic.

-Max

Edit: Er, I meant survival traits. Like "forest survival," "wasteland survival," etc. It was suggested by Chris Byler a few posts up.

[Endoperez]

MaxWilson said:
I like the idea of natural disaster events that survival scales protect against. Sounds thematic.

What are survival scales? Something like people in Drain being able to resist magical sleep spell and burning the evil witch, while people under Magic would be put asleep, 3% of the population would die and the witch would steal some of your gold?

[Chris_Byler]

Endoperez said:

This only works in practice if the really bad events require Misfortune, or at least are prevented in lucky provinces.
As an example, something that would destroy magic items is extremely dangerous, if you consider the investment some items represent.

Well, that's the point - there's widespread opinion that misfortune isn't painful enough. Any bad event will hit a misfortune nation more often than it hits a luck nation (unless it's otherwise impossible because of other scales of each respective nation).

If it's a bad event that requires Drain, nations that, in theory, will encounter it most often are Misfortune nation with commanders under Drain, e.g. in Ulmish lands.

Or commanders in enemy Luck/Drain dominions (since enemy luck is your misfortune).

In practice, it might be that nations that nations that choose Drain are under the threat of losing key items from the very beginning, and actually suffer the event far more often than those who are under Drain for just the short while they spend in the conquest.

Hmm. Possibly, but lucky nations don't get many bad events at all, so they would get any particular bad event even more rarely than that. When you did get the event it would often be an item that isn't that important - especially if you're a luck nation and every Joe Random Commander has a bane blade you got for free or something like that.

Anyway, any drain nation has, by definition, chosen to sacrifice some magical power for (a) making things more difficult for enemy mages in their dominion too and (b) points to spend elsewhere. Drain is supposed to be a negative scale, and combining it with misfortune would make it worse, which is fine IMO.

If you're in or near a friendly lab you can usually reforge and replace that item in a turn or two so it's not much worse than losing the gems equivalent. (Which even a luck nation will do sometimes, but they'll gain far more event gems than they lose.) If you're three provinces deep in enemy territory, sieging their castle and then your enormous cauldron of broth crumbles to dust just as Bogus cuts your supply line, you've got problems. (If you're sieging Atlantis's castle and your water breathing item crumbles to dust you've got BIG problems.)

Luck should protect you from the nastiest events, because otherwise Luck nations may meet them more often than Order/Misfortune nations.

I disagree - turmoil/luck gives you more events, but it doesn't give you more bad events, because of the adjustment in the good/bad percentage. You get many more good events and slightly *fewer* bad events. People really, really notice the bad events they get with luck, because they think luck 3 should be 100% good events or something, but there really are very few compared to the almost constant stream of good events.

In this specific case, though, it wouldn't hurt for the "item loses its power" event to require, say, Misfortune-1 Drain-1. The terrain-dependent troop-killing disasters (avalanches, quicksand, etc.) would be fine as regular bad events with no particular scale requirement, I think. Lucky nations would get them only rarely, like any other bad event.