Income and Luck Scales for Megagame
 

Hi, I'm playing MA Ermor in Velusion's 60 player Megagame. I have been agonizing over the scale choice. Currently, I have Order 3 and Misfortune 3. I had it as Turmoil 3 Lucky 3 before, but I heard that there is a hard limit of 4 lucky/unlucky events per turn, so theoretically if I survive to mid game, order should scale much more.

However I'm also taking Death 3, and will be basing my army on Shadow Vestals, which don't cost much. So order scales, which normally gives a multiplicative effect in the later parts of the game, don't give as much benefit since I would have little base income. On the other hand, I don't think heroes for MA Ermor are a necessity, but would be nice.

I'm also scared with misfortune 3 I may be struck with something that will kill me in the early game.

Should I even consider something like order 1 and misfortune 1? Does misfortune scale affect the severity of the bad luck event, or just the number of possible events? Please advise with your pet theories regarding income and luck scales =)

Re: Income and Luck Scales for Megagame
 

I just can't stand the idea of misfortune 3. Order 3 misfortune 2 is ok, but i just have something against misfortune 3. Just prejudice I guess though, as I've never actually crunched numbers on it.

Re: Income and Luck Scales for Megagame
 

I think Turmoil-Luck 3 is more fun, and Order is boring. Just my personal preference! The limit on random events per turn, if any, is per-nation. Plus you can get forts, cool items, diverse gems, and of course wads of cash from luck. The only thing I don't like about luck is the damn militia that shows up all the time.

Re: Income and Luck Scales for Megagame
 

I played MA ermor with Turmoil-3, Luck-3, Death-3 and Magic-3.

The scale I hated the most was Death-3, the rest were great. My advice take Growth-3. Ermor, Growth-3 you say am I mad? No, Death-3 is a no brainer really for LA Ermor but MA Ermor really, really needs growth.

You reanimate, this requires population, death kills it all off. So take Growth-3 instead, put taxes to 200% and patrol, then reanimate. Vary provinces every now and again so Growth replenishes your population. Its kinda like blood hunting...

Also you will have a strong income with Growth-3.

Oh yea with T/L-3 you get alot of gems, magic items, the 3,000gp, 1,000 gp and free loremaster events where pretty common. But that could change by taking growth...

Re: Income and Luck Scales for Megagame
 

A lot of people have also said death 3 is really really bad, hmm I guess I gotta rework this.

Re: Income and Luck Scales for Megagame
 

I play with misfortune 3 / order 3 quite often. It is possible to be slammed early with events that cripple, but rather unlikely. Once you get out of the early game the vast majority of bad events are just annoying - hardly crippling.

Re: Income and Luck Scales for Megagame
 

Death 3 and Misfortune 2/3 == looking for trouble.

The worse your bad scales are the more bad events get unlocked that can hit you. And some of the Death 3 ones are really bad.

Re: Income and Luck Scales for Megagame
 

I never take death/misfortune combo anymore. In the games I have taken it I have been crippled by plagues.

Re: Income and Luck Scales for Megagame
 

In a large game like this death is not such a great idea. By turn 50+ or so you will be sitting with like 1/4 of the income of the nation that went with growth 3, that means a ton less mages/forts for you.

Re: Income and Luck Scales for Megagame
 

Evilhomer, you should learn to run your numbers. My calculations show that growth 3 gives 82% more income then death 3 by turn 50. This is in provinces with less then 10k pop. In provinces with more pop the difference is less.

Re: Income and Luck Scales for Megagame
 

Yeah i was just taking a bit of a stab in the dark, therefore i did say turn 50+, not turn 50 (I admit they were exaggerated by more then i thought, must be influenced by playing the cb mod so much). However your numbers are not correct either:
pop:10000 at start, assuming no fort and no other scale modifiers:
pop at 50 (growth 3): 10000*1.006^50=13486
income/turn=13486*0.01*1.06=143 gold

pop at 50 (death 3): 10000*0.994^50=7401
income/turn=7401*0.01*0.94=70 gold

gold increase due to growth = 104 %. I dunno what you mean by the percentage being less or more depending on population since the income is directly proportional to you population, so you end up with the same % in the end. 1/4 income was obviously a bit exaggerated but money after upkeep might be cut that way. Anyway i think the benefit of taking growth in a mega game like this is pretty clear.

Re: Income and Luck Scales for Megagame
 

Ah yes, but a couple other considerations when you try to extrapolate these results out to your kingdom rather than a single province:

1) This calculation is 50 turns from when your full growth/death scale takes effect. Even by turn 60 or 70 its unlikely that many of your provinces will have had your full scales on them for 50 turns. Your overall kingdom growth/death rate is always going to average less than the maximum difference implied by full scales, usually significantly so.

2) This calculation, if extrapolated out to your kingdom rather than a single province assumes that the extra 240 design points for going with a death scale resulted in no extra territories being held. For reference, this is the difference between having an imprisoned pretender and an awake one. If having an awake pretender allows you to snag a couple extra provinces then that will reduce this difference.

3) There is a quasi inflation that goes on as the game progresses because of the decreasing effectiveness of gold recruitable troops. At the beginning gold is extremely important, by turn 50 almost always less so (significantly less so depending on your strategy). Kinda hard to quantify numerically, but 100% more gold on turn 50 isn't worth the same as 100% more gold turn 1.

On the flip side of the coin:

1) Death scales greatly increase your chance of getting population killing random events, and thus permanently affecting your income, perhaps cripplingly early. Particularly with misfortune.

2) Death scales will kill off your old mages much faster, replacements cost gold.


All in all, even from a strictly gold income point of view the growth/death question isn't very well modeled by a simple exponential multiplication.

Re: Income and Luck Scales for Megagame
 

Understood Baalz, but does the consideration change in a longer term/highly populated game? If there are static borders for quite awhile you will see your net income go down as you recruit troops and your gross income is reduced slightly through death.

It may change strategy as you will be prodded to be continuously aggressive to conquer new territory. Not necessarily a bad thing, but a factor.

Re: Income and Luck Scales for Megagame
 

Yeah i agree with all those points of course, but when you consider a choice you might start with a simple model i guess.

Anyway i really do think the value of picking growth increases with the size and expected lenght of the game, so this should be the optimal type of game to pick growth in.

You might add a few more in fact to the long list of considerations

1. growth gives added supply
2. A large chunk of your nation might have been conquered from dead/dying nations by turn 50.
3. The fact that time works for you not against you allows you to be peaceful if you want http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Additionally it might be intresting to know that the percentage difference between growth 3 and death 3 becomes larger if you pick turmoil as well (and less if you pick order).

Re: Income and Luck Scales for Megagame
 

I think the biggest factor, much more than length of game, is static-ness of borders. Doesn't matter near as much how long the game goes on, what matters is how long your dominion has effected the provinces you hold. If you're an aggressive player and more or less constantly expanding (or less optimistic - trading provinces) then a good portion of your kingdom is always freshly under your dominion (or still under an enemies) so hasn't had time for that exponential growth. If your borders are fairly stable and your dominion covers most of your territories, you'll see much more of an effect from growth/death.

Personally, I wouldn't take death and misfortune unless you're playing a nation/strategy not reliant on income from population (like LA Ermor).

Re: Income and Luck Scales for Megagame
 

Death and misfortune arent very nice together. In a recent single player game i got a plague at my capitol on turn 2, reducing it to 14000 population...

Re: Income and Luck Scales for Megagame
 

The term DOH comes to mind http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

Re: Income and Luck Scales for Megagame
 

Ouch! I thought severely bad events weren't allowed to happen for the first 10 turns or something, but maybe a plague isn't considered really severe. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

-Max

Re: Income and Luck Scales for Megagame
 

I never had a really bad time with a misfortune/death scale. I always go with three order in those cases though, and I never go with three misfortune and three death. It is usually more like one in one and two in the other, max.