Petition to change LUCK\ORDER Scales

[Catquiet]

At the moment taking Order +3 is almost mandatory for multi-player games, while luck +3 is fairly useless.

ORDER needs to be toned down to +5% increase in gold revenue per tick with no affect on random events. A well-ordered society with strong laws is going to get hit by hurricanes just as often as a more relaxed society.

+ or - LUCK should reduce the severity of the random events on the opposite end of the scale. With +1 Luck a nation should be able to avoid the population killing bad events, with +3 Luck bad events should be minor inconveniences at most.

Anyone else want to join me in calling for these changes?

[Teraswaerto]

Not necessarily those exact changes, but yeah, something should change to make luck more, and order less, effective.

[apoger]

I'd rather have all the scales back to the Dom1 levels... where they ALL mattered.

Right now Proudction and Death are shadows of their former selves. A land of ultimate production and growth has only 24% better taxes and 60% better production over a land of ultimate sloth and death. Keep in mind the the land of sloth and death gets 560 nation points over the land of production and growth.

I know Illwinter disliked the idea that players wanted Order +3, Prod +3, Growth +3. However it's natural to WANT lots of good things. It was still a challenge to get what you wanted and still be able to make a good nation. Hard choices were called for.

In Dom2 things have been changed to make Prod and Growth much less important. Order was cranked to take up the slack. Luck was largely reduced in potency as well.

I contend that the Dom2 scales are just as imbalanced, if not more so.

I prefer Order being used to influence unrest levels, while Prod & Growth influenced taxes. It made perfect sense. The "simplification" in Dom2 did nothing to help the game. It didn't even stop hiking taxes and patrolling.

This is just my opinion, of course. However I think IW would have gotten much better effect by leaving the excellent balance of Dom1 alone. If they wanted to pump the potency of pretender magic (which seems to be their intent) then it could have been done simply by reducing the nation point costs of magic picks. This would have created minimal disruption to the system that was already working well.

Sorry to drop that long discuusion on the topic of Order/Luck... but the system of scale changes is part and parcel of the issue.

[SurvivalistMerc]

I don't think they would have to mess with the scales at all if they would just do one other thing....

Make the good (lucky) events as desirable as the bad (unlucky) events are undesirable. In this way, taking order to reduce the frequency of events could prove costly. Taking unluck would cheat your empire of the very amazing things that could happen if you were lucky.

Just changing the random events could make balanced luck and order scales as desirable as order 3, unluck 3, which is my current favorite.

[apoger]

>Make the good (lucky) events as desirable as the bad (unlucky) events are undesirable. In this way, taking order to reduce the frequency of events could prove costly. Taking unluck would cheat your empire of the very amazing things that could happen if you were lucky.


I agree. However IW seems to have a thing for creating a game where there is downward economic spiral. All their decisions have gone that way. I'm not particularly happy with this philosophy.

In a magic world where gods exude population destroying death, there should also be gods that exude an explosion of life.

If high taxes create death, then low taxes should create growth.

If misfortune creates feared events, then luck should create equally welcome events.


I favor a balanced approach, which IMHO would be logical and fun. Obviously Illwinter disagrees, and it's their game. Still, I paid my 50 bucks, and as such feel that I can ***** and moan about my perceptions of their game, for what it's worth.

[ November 22, 2003, 21:22: Message edited by: apoger ]

[Treebeard]

I've suggested it before, but I'll do it again, let the intensity of good and bad effects to be regulate by the luck scale, so a flood on a unluck 3 nation be stronger than a flood on a luck 3 nation. That would do wonders to make luck/turmoil more attractive.