Thoughts on making "luck" equally attractive

[Xietor]

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.

[quantum_mechani]

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.

[JimMorrison]

You'd think after doing this 2000 times or so, one would know where to put things.


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.

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.

[Xietor]

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.

[Baalz]

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....

[Hoplosternum]

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.

[dirtywick]

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.

[Zeldor]

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.

[Xietor]

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.

[Endoperez]

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.