[Truper]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
Simply:

The severity of major bad and good events could be reduced (1500 gold showing up is pretty wierd).

Weird maybe, but a strong incentive for luck +3.

The frequency of major events could be eliminated for the first couple turns and reduced until turn 10.

I belive this is already the case.

The home province could be made permanently immune to major events (gold mine discovered, temple destroyed).).

Hmm. The home province, as the center of one's dominion, should be effected by all the scales, luck not excepted.

The scales could be rebalanced to avoid increasing rewards, for example, luck scale costing 30-35-40-40-45-50 to move from 3 unluck to 3 luck. To be more specific...

0 -> 1 luck reduces bad events by 20%
1 -> 2 luck reduces bad events by 25% (net 40%)
2 -> 3 luck reduces bad events by 33% (net 60%)

0 -> 1 order reduces bad events by 10%
1 -> 2 order reduces bad events by 11% (net 20%)
2 -> 3 order reduces bad events by 13% (net 30%)

As you can see, the reward accelerates, making +1 luck or order scales inefficient. ).

This makes no sense at all. Net 20, 40, 60. Net 10, 20, 30. Perfectly linear and rational.

Moving both scales simultaneously:

0 -> 1 luck & order reduces bad events by 28%
1 -> 2 luck & order reduces bad events by 33% (net 52%)
2 -> 3 luck & order reduces bad events by 42% (net 72%)

Thus... since negative events are so potent, and so common, a luck and/or scale is a good idea. And because of increasing returns, concentrating on one or the other is a good idea (in other words, 2 order or 2 luck is better than 1 order + 1 luck, even though both cost the same design points). If bad events are much more important than good events (as seems to be true), then moving from luck 0 to luck 1 costs as much as moving from luck 2 to luck 3, but is 66% more useful!).

Seems balanced to me. As you pointed out, sometimes you get 1500 gold. And somtimes Bogus the troll shows up...

Anyway - if good events and bad events were balanced in their potency, and reduced in severity, then the above analysis would be rendered irrelevant because the accelerating rewards of high luck/order from avoiding bad events would be countered by the diminishing rewards of additional positive events (I didn't show it, but the incremental increase in positive events from luck decreases rather than increasing with luck, and of course positive events decrease with order). But as long as negative events dominate positive events, or all events can be vastly powerful, the increasing/decreasing rewards suggest that 3 luck or 3 unluck is vastly preferable to any other luck level, and turmoil is very dangerous to any nation that needs living people, unless they have a +3 luck scale (3 turmoil, 3 luck: 48% fewer bad events). A (3 unluck, 3 order) scale seems wise, with only 12% more negative events but much better revenue (21% better? Order is +7% now, right?) as well as unrest-fighting ability for when unrest events occur (I assume that is also an effect of order?). A 3-unluck, 3-order scale is especially good when you consider that a 2-unluck, 2-order scale ALSO increases negative events by exactly the same amount (12%), but gives less revenue!).

I'm afraid I can't even follow this.

This analysis assumes luck scales do not affect event frequency, and that you are not reliant on heroes or crossbreeding. Do luck scales increase event frequency? I thought they did in Dominions I...).

To my knowledge, luck doesn't affect frequency, only order and the frequency selection at game creation.

-Cherry [/quote]

Edit: remove bolding and fix typo

[ November 18, 2003, 20:22: Message edited by: Truper ]