Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

Yes, a separate thread from Baalz' thread on scales. From my personal observations in Kingmaker, even the addition of Worthy Heroes was insufficient to move players away from the cookie cutter 3 order plus misf scales.

Assuming diversity is the spice of life, and we are trying to avoid cookie cutter builds, which of the following do you think may be a good idea to get more players to take luck scales(or add your own ideas):

1. Tougher Heroes: Since you have a base 3 percent chance to get a hero each turn, and luck adds an additional percent, making tougher heroes could cause people to forgo the order/misf scales for a chance at a tough hero.

*the problem with this theory is a tough hero likely only helps you early in the game. Getting a tough hero after you have angels or wraithlords in constr 6 gear is a yawner.

2. With each point of positive Luck, add some fortune telling to your pretender/or capital. Similar to dom 9/10 giving awe. Have luck give an added feature to the pretender. Maybe 3 luck even gives fortunetelling and luck in battles to your pretender only.

3. Divorce the order/turmoil scales from the luck scales

Presently Order 3 is considered the strongest scale with its strong income bonus. An added bonus is order 3 also reduces random events. This reduces the risk of early bad events, allowing a realistic risk of 2 misf(and some bold players 3 misf). The theory being if they can survive the 1st year with no awful event, then the bonus points were worth it.

If Order ONLY gave a bonus to income, then taking misfortune becomes a greater risk(and should it not be). So then instead of a double bonus from order 3, you get the income, but to get the points for misfortune, you will actually bear the true cost of misfortune.

4. Add a percent chance for a band of mercenaries to show up at your gate for you to hire. You could only get a chance at mecenaries appearing if you had positive luck.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

The obvious thing is simply up the effect of luck - more good events (and bad events for misfortune). This is, in fact, exactly what CB scales does.

EDIT: I also don't think you could, thematically, make heroes a lot stronger than worthy heroes. Especially for human nations.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

You'd think after doing this 2000 times or so, one would know where to put things. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif


1. Actually, I disagree that heroes necessarily become somewhat obsolete later in the game. If more of them had high magic paths to make end game BF magics more viable, that would be one help. But the other thing, in my last random magic pick test, LA Pythium got a hero named Faglius. If you are not familiar with him, he is a very solid thug chassis, but he has 2 additional special attacks with Eyeloss and Heartfinding attached to them. Seems to me that properly geared, he could be a powerful SC hunter, and by extension I think if there were more heroes, and more chance to get them (a +1 across the board would be nice, so 1% with Misf1 and 7% with Luck3) would enhance their role in the game somewhat.

2. That's a neat idea! I've felt that your scale picks should add direct effects to your pretender. In fact, I think high magic should as well, like high F spreading heat from pretender, etc, though that's another thread. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

3. I'm not sold on this one. I do like how in CBM, the balance of that synergy is pushed more in favor of the Luck scale, without completely removing the effect of "chaos and order" on random events. I think that rather than weakening the Order scale (by removing secondary effect), it might be more interesting to gameplay to simply strengthen the other scales a bit, such as CBM attempts to do.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

Both Jim and QM have good points.

Instead of making Heroes Tougher in the SC sense, maybe additional magic paths and/or sc killing abilities would make them treasured throughout the game.

Qm's point about not allowing a "tit for tat" balance could be effective to a degree as well, while preserving the tradition that turmoil has more random events than order(does it?).

Maybe if luck was increased to 7, and order decreased to 3,
then you would still have a fair gap of 4 percent. Of course you do not eliminate the problem of 3 order cushioning the blow of taking misfortune, but something is better than nothing.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

Nah.
These are the things luck can give you:

Luck gives gold (good early on, not that great later),
random gems (nice early on, good later and is situationally extremely good),
random items (mostly useless),
castles (always good to very good, depending on the province)
labs (usually in bad places)
units (bad if militia or equivalent, some nationals can be decent)
H3 priest + militia (weak)
mages (from decent to VERY good, depending on if it gives new magic)
heroes (poor to very good, see above)
etc etc

Now, what of these are worth more than gold in late game?
Events that give gems, construction 4 or 6 items, castles, mages, some heroes. Out of these, only gems are common. Here are suggestions for changing existing events, and for adding new ones:

Items:
Most luck events that give items give a totally random item.
"Found a magic item" should give random item from levels 2 to 6.
"Tomb of an ancient hero" should give level 2 item.
"Tomb of an ancient king" should give level 4 item.
the third tomb event should give level 4 or 6 item (I don't remember it's description, or if there is one)
"Gift from Shadow Seers/Moon Mages" is random, and could stay that way or become more spesific (only level 4?) if so deemed.
NEW: A mage creating great item: constr 4 or 6
NEW: A magic item and some gems being recovered from a wandering magician: random

"Great Treasures, 3000 gp and a magic item" event should give level 4 or 6 item OR an item that requires at least level 3 in a path to forge. The first is a simple solution, the latter an advanced one.


Mages:
What mages can you get from events? Every scale should allow something. I think Magic allows for astral mages (renegade Moon Mage or Shadow Seer or whatever. Or perhaps that's the Elludian Assassin, I can't remember). Coast provinces allow for Seirens, magic and/or growth might be required. Death allows for Necromancers. Is there an event that creates an Animist and his vinemen followers, or is that a mercenary?

Turmoil should allow for Bloodhenge Druids or other weak Blood mages, and perhaps rebellious mages of various nations. Production could allow for Alchemists and various engineering mages, but I think they're all national (EA Arcos, LA Man). Gnomes being discovered in a cave, Tien Chi mages looking for secrets of immortality in Orderous provinces, a monkey Guru found asleep in a Sloth land, etc.


Buildings:
If laboratory-giving events were only limited to provinces which have recruitable commanders that require a lab, they would be much more useful. Even if most indy mages require a temple in addition to the lab.

Castles are almost always a good thing. If someone is conquering you and happens to conquer an undefended province which happens to get a castle, that's tough, but the castle provinces are already quite rare.

Temples are useful for recruitment, but also for spreading your dominion. The current "your believers have put up a temple" could be restricted to provinces with recruitable priests, and another could be made where you get a priest and a temple in neutral or hostile dominion.


Units:
Better troops with quality commander. National events would be best: Black Lord, Black Knights and some Guardians for MA Ulm, Emerald Guards and Serpent Knights for MA Pythium, Iceclads and those storm fliers for MA/LA Caelum, etc. Events with units normally only available as summons would be good. These would generally require an existing laboratory and some spesific scale, like Production for Mechanical Men and Crushers, Death for wights, banes and similar, etc.
Winter Wolves being imprisoned in labs in midwinter in cold provinces, Scorpion Men guarding ancient treasure hordes in wastes under Heat, etc etc are also interesting possibilities.
These could also work as bad events with little change, of course.

Currently, there are no events that give thug-capable commanders. These could be one answer, since they are more useful in late game than in early, before you can give them proper equipment. The only non-mage thug chassis I can think of is Bane Lord, but I'm sure there are some non-undead ones as well. Especially since you can get units as commanders. A Gargoyle? Sea Troll? EA Atlantis Deep One? One of the less powerful Angels? A Hell Knight? There are lots of possibilities.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

Well, I think the issue is more that order is overpowered than that luck is underpowered. The prevalence of order combined with it's impact on luck is what makes luck so unattractive. Luck would be much more common if order-0 ever happened....

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

Here is where a test shows that order 3 isn't better that luck / turmoil. And that there is no need to boost luck at all.

The reason why everyone and his dog takes order 3 is because the game is more predictable that way. I has nothing to do with the benefits it really gives...

Chek post #584132.
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=582740

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

The link above is broken for me. A correction:

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...;Number=582740

Copying & pasting the URL from your browser only works for someone who has the same view settings as you. Use the "Post Link" instead of manually trim the URL.

I'm skeptical of the test anyway. 9 provinces isn't exactly a representative empire. Do it with 40 provinces and I'll start to pay attention.

-Max

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

That's what usually happen when someone proves some other wrong. They say "your test suck, because of 'insert stupid condition here'". Then they ask others to do the test again.

Do that 40 province test yourself and then I'll start to pay attention, until then my test stands, for lack of a better proof ? or because it's true.

Thanks for the link though.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

Worthy Heroes is a great mod. But the problem with many of the heroes are they are too thematic and therefore similar to what you get anyway.

For example Pythium gets a great Mage as a hero. He's like an extra Holy Theug. Stacks of magic. But he's very similar to the mages you already can recruit - even if a bit better. He doesn't really add anything different. A weaker mage with Nature or Earth would be far more useful really.

Likewise Jomon gets a nice assassin hero. But they can already recruit assassins so his value is that much less.

Niefel gets a blood Jarl iirc. Probably the strongest hero in the mod. But to Niefel he is just another Jarl with an extra blood path or two.

The sea nations seem to get a few traitors/heretics from their enemies and I think these are probably very useful. What you want is not necessarilly more powerful heroes but ones that can do things you usually can't. Paths you can't recruit. A thug if you have none you can summon/recruit. An assassin or spy if you don't have these as nationals. Someone who is naturally amphibious for a land lubber nation. If the heroes gave you extra options rather than just an extra (all be it good) leader that would make the luck scales better.

As I am a big fan of magic diversity I would also like to see an event that gives a random commander a random path in magic.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

Order gives you +21% income in every province, luck will max out on 4 events, so luck looses usefulness on bigger empires.

I personally think that the simplest way to balance luck would be to remove the event limit, or make the limit depending on province count, so that bigger empires may get more events.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

Simply remove the 3 event cap, or increase the number of possible events per turn.

I'd also really like to see the militia event disappear.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

No one is taking luck for heroes, chance is still very small. That is just one of the reasons not to take Misfortune [though I got heroes with Misf2]. Order3 makes it even less interesting to take Luck and better to take Misf.

All the things you can get from luck are really nice, but still, Order makes them really less frequent. And that pesky even limit. That simply makes that scale not worth much later. Especially when you have order.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

Maybe increase the chance of getting a hero each turn by 1.5 percent, rounded up, rather than 1 percent.

Maybe instead of just getting a chance at heroes, you would with positive luck only also get random chance at a mercenary hero, or band of mercenaries. So instead of having to bid for them against other nations, they show up at your gate, and you can accept them, pay their upkeep, or refuse them.

They could be identical to mercenaries in the game now, but have different names. and never run out.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

As far as I know the 3 event limit cap is another myth... I read some people writing about getting 5 or 6 good events in a single turn regularly.

But I'd sure like an official confirmation.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

Whoa there, calm down. I'm sorry if my tone was unwarrantedly hostile. Luck is known to not scale with empire size. A test which uses a very small empire is not going to give representative results and doesn't prove anything even in an empirical sense about the game mechanics.

-Max

P.S. I'm not sure if I believe in the 3 event cap, but it seems low to me. I'm pretty sure I've seen up to 4 or 5 events on some turns.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

Then when do you run that 40 province test ?

Until then it proves that with a low amount of provinces the amount of benefits is about the same. Which means that taking order 3 isn't a "best choice".

EDIT : not that it matters lol, boost luck anyway !
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

Kasnavada,

You're being silly. I haven't made any positive claims<font color="red">[1]</font> and therefore don't require empirical tests to support them. You're being overly sensitive about criticism.

All the same, I've contemplated running a larger test because so many people have done the smaller one and it would be nice to have data on a more representative sample. It's possible that you may have annoyed me into doing so later on this week.

-Max

Edit: <font color="red">[1] Except that "Luck is known to not scale with empire size." If you're disputing that claim, say so and I'll be required to provide evidence. But I think you already know that that claim is true.

P.S. I agree that your test proves that small empires benefit more from Luck than Order.
</font>

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

Well, the exact same can be told about your comments ! Silly and all...

Whatever, believe what you want.

That's a point I don't know about, actually. So many people speak about a 3 event limit and some speak about 6...

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

Okay, then in that case I do have to support the claim about luck not scaling. I'll do so later this week.

-Max

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

If you manage to find out that what the max limit of event is I'd be interested to know, and possibly make it bigger. It's rather silly that lucks would gets worse when the places where luck events can occur is made bigger...

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

Next time you do take a screen.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

Certain spells like Baleful Star show up in the message log as "events" even though they're not. If you're up against a particulary zealous enemy they might even spam those types of spells at you since they are "anonymous".

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

Because there is no need to run a test? There is a cap to events - be it 3 or 5 or 6... it doesnt matter. Whatever it is, at some point Luck stops scaling as your empire grows. Order never does.

Additionally, as the person challenging convention I think the burden of proof is on you, kasnavada.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

To be civil, I would like to say kas has a point that order is predictable, and many take the scale to get a predictable income.

That said, and with no empirical proof other than having played wayyyyyyyyy too many dominions games for years now, there is a hard cap on the luck events. That is based on experience. So I can offer no piece of code or any scientific
test.

But Kas is also correct in that you can exceed the cap at times, but not consistently. If you capture provinces, you sometimes get events that the other player would have received, resulting in an extra 1 or 2 events depending on how your war is going.

Of course you can get many many "bad" events per turn if your enemy is spamming spells on your provinces. But the lucky events are capped, and the number i believe the cap to be is 4. So on a 300 province map, if you own 50 provinces, 4/50 is not as good as when you owned fewer provinces.

Accepting the cap as a reality, and for the sake of avoiding argument, let us please get the thread back on track. For those who forgot what it is about, read the 1st post.

In particular, any thoughts about adding a luck event where mercenaries show up at your gate?

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smirk.gif

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

One reason I like Luck is the converse of this - that Luck is overly helpful in the early game. So in the first few turns when +22% income may translate into 80/90 extra gold, a luck event can get you 1000gp. Admittedly it is unpredictable. I am in 2 games now with Luck 3 - one I am coming up short in. The other has been amazing. Every turn I have been able to buy everything I can with money left over. I have permanent income raising events, gems, one time gold events etc. And that is in less than 15 turns. It may not equate to the long-term advantage of order in a math analysis, but qualitatively it is leading to rapid expansion that my gut tells me is better than the bonuses I'd be reaping with Order.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

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.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

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 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

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.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

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.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

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

-Max

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

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.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

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. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif 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! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif).


Oh and Xietor, you do know they finally raised the unit cap? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif So don't lose hope yet. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

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.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

Not all events give an item, I don't think the lab size would necessarily be a problem there. (Although it still wouldn't hurt to raise it for people who want to play obscenely huge games.) Since the events happen after your own forging, you would never lose a deliberately forged item because you got too many event items, only the reverse (which is just equivalent to no event at all).

When I suggested 50 as the cap, I was deliberately intending it to be a number that you *wouldn't* actually reach - so that for programming purposes there might still be a cap, but for gameplay purposes there effectively wouldn't. But maybe on those 1000+ province maps, a T3/L3 empire could actually have 50 events, I don't know. At that point the game would probably be out of its competitive stages anyway.


A player with a mere 80 provinces would be very unlikely to get 10 events, I think, let alone to have them all be indy attacks, even if they have heavy misfortune without any order at all. To get 10 events of any kind with any regularity you'd probably need hundreds of provinces, and even then, most would be unrest, loss of tax revenue, population death, gem loss, building destruction, and other minor annoyances.


Oh yeah: if IW is reading this thread, IMO troop events should always come with a leader, if they don't already. Don't make the player waste a turn (or more than one) getting a commander there to pick them up - some of those troops are going to be slow enough to reach the front as it is (where they may or may not be good for anything more than arrow bait/lancebreakers). Even a generic indy commander would be enough to lead the units somewhere else where they can be placed under someone else's command.


P.S. I just had an idea for a new event: {Commander}'s magic item {item} has mysteriously lost its power and crumbled to dust. (Artifacts should be immune; drain scale makes it more likely or is required.) Considering the fact that your luck scale is unlucky for enemies invading your dominion, this could make it rather unpleasant to invade a lucky Ulm. (Or worse, a lucky sea nation!)

Also, terrain-dependent events that work similarly to Lure of the Deep/Beckoning, or have units buried by avalanches, rockslides, drowned in bogs or get lost until they die of exposure in wastelands. (Appropriate survival abilities protect.)

Without reform to the event caps etc., new events won't necessarily fix the order/luck balance. But they're still cool. Why shouldn't bad luck in harsh terrain include the sometimes-deadly mishaps that go with that terrain?

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 - in addition to indies attacking your rear and potentially cutting your supply lines, you'd also potentially lose troops to deadly accidents and lose magic items *at the front* that might be hard to replace quickly before the next battle. In the meantime the lucky nation is getting free reinforcements to help fight you, and a hero to lead them.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

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.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

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

-Max

<font color="red">Edit: Er, I meant survival traits. Like "forest survival," "wasteland survival," etc. It was suggested by Chris Byler a few posts up.</font>

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

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?

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

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).

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

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

If there could be more than 3 events per turn per nation, luck would be more interesting.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

Luck can give you at least 4 events, perhaps more. I don't know what the actual limit is. It's hard to test because some events can also happen from spells cast by AI or other players, but I and other players have got more than three events that didn't come from spells, without special event-generating pretenders.

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

Chris_Byler:

I think Misfortune is fine as it is. Simply Luck is not good enough to invest points there most of the time. Mostly because Order makes it weaker and it gets weaker with big nations [and everyone plans to have a big nation].

Re: Thoughts on making \"luck\" equally attractive
 

I've also sighted 4 events, but it seems clear that the number of events is not proportional to the number of provinces, which makes luck less attractive than order (which scales, unless you're playing against LA Ermor/R'lyeh) on large maps/late game.