Random Events

[SurvivalistMerc]

Does anyone else think that most random events are bad and that the good ones hardly make up for the bad ones such that having order scales is a very nice thing?

The bad events I keep getting involve things like floods and earthquakes destroying population permanently. I don't see new migrants adding to the workforce of any provinces. Brigand events and higher taxes events kind of cancel each other out.

One time I had a barely guarded new combat hero with a full deck of items going to my front lines...and 5 heroes who considered my realm "unjust" appeared in the square where he was. This was between my two forts and their presence reduced my resources at the forts dramatically. Not counting the items I lost...which in turn made these already powerful heroes that much more difficult to kill. When I did kill them, I didn't get all of their good magical items. I did end up with "precious," but it seemed hardly worth what I had to do to get it.

I tried Ctis with order 3....everything was so predictable. I hope when I get the game the manual will explain the scales in detail. I think order gives more revenue, too...which is always helpful.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
Does anyone else think that most random events are bad and that the good ones hardly make up for the bad ones such that having order scales is a very nice thing?

IF you want no events at all then Order scales is a good choice along with its other bonuses. The luck scale shifts the amount of good events vs bad events. Order/chaos doesnt change the type, just the amount.

The bad events I keep getting involve things like floods and earthquakes destroying population permanently.

Was this later in the game? There are spells which duplicate just about every bad event so you dont really know if its an event or an AI doing it.

One time I had a barely guarded new combat hero with a full deck of items going to my front lines...and 5 heroes who considered my realm "unjust" appeared in the square where he was.

Yeah those dudes have smacked me also. Sometimes its a wimpy province and I leave them there to be a problem for anyone coming at me from that direction.

When I did kill them, I didn't get all of their good magical items. I did end up with "precious," but it seemed hardly worth what I had to do to get it.

Did they rout? Thats one good use of fast (usually light troops) flankers. To attack the rear guys so they die instead of rout.

That depends on your luck scale and the race it provides.

Order. Increased Income by 7% and 10% reduction in Random Events for each scale.

Turmoil. Decreased Income by 7% and 10% increase in Random Events for each scale.


I've played around with Turmoil 3, Luck 3 with various lower income nations; without very much success. Even with 80Good/20Bad chances; the lists of random bad far outweigh the random good. Or at least bad events are weighted to flooding and earthquakes and uprising vs good getting a handful of gems, -20 Disorder or 100 Gold.

Perhaps if luck affected troop combat in some fashion (if I haven't been able to tell) then it might be more worth it as far as a standard scale that is desired.

There is one redeeming factor though, Void Summonings are much increased and Heroes flock to your cause.

[licker]

The power of the negative random events is worring to me. I posted about it earlier, and was basically told if you don't want them go with order or luck. Errr, that's fine and all, but it doesn't address the balance issues involved.

The facts are that an early negative random event might as well be a game ender, lose 1/4th or 1/5th of your home provinces pop in the first few turns and see how competative you will be.

On the other side the positive random events can also be too overpowering (1500gcs anyone?) The cost of playing with the scales does not balance in proportion to the severity of the events. Now you can make them rare, true, but that seems to defeat the purpose of having them in the first place.

And no, saddly I do not have a good suggestion as to how to remedy this situation, just the complaint that being 'forced' (and I use that term lightly here) to play with either Order +3 or Luck +2,3 isn't exactly the kind of solution I'm talking about.

Now Ermor and maybe Pangea can play with Unluck and low order, but for the rest of the nations... its too much of a gamble to be practical for a competative game. That's where the imbalance lies.

[apoger]

Turmoil +3 and Luck +3 just didn't provide any happiness in my tests. I wouldn't recommend it.

My best results are Order +3 and Misfortune +3, while keeping growth and production at a +1 minimum. Very few bad events this way. Good economy. And nice boost to nation points from the misfortune.

[SurvivalistMerc]

Thank you all for your prompt responses.

Gandalf, I had a lot of them in the first 40 turns. In the demo, where the human player is limited to level 4 research.

And they did include a flood of my home province. That was without any unluck scales.

I've toyed with order 1, luck 1 with Abyssia, and it's looking as if I should have gone with more order and no luck.

Also, I didn't realize the importance of productivity for Abyssia. All it seems the abyssians need is to find a source of cheap archers, preferably the shortbow kind that won't hurt their heavy infantry types much, and they will be golden.

I know you can "tweak" the number of random events in the initial game creation process. But somehow this seems a bit like cheating.

[Saber Cherry]

Simply:

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

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

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

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. 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!

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!

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...

-Cherry

[ November 18, 2003, 19:19: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[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 ]

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
Thank you all for your prompt responses.

Gandalf, I had a lot of them in the first 40 turns. In the demo, where the human player is limited to level 4 research.

And they did include a flood of my home province. That was without any unluck scales.

I've toyed with order 1, luck 1 with Abyssia, and it's looking as if I should have gone with more order and no luck.

Also, I didn't realize the importance of productivity for Abyssia. All it seems the abyssians need is to find a source of cheap archers, preferably the shortbow kind that won't hurt their heavy infantry types much, and they will be golden.

As an aside: this is a great argument for the Humanbred Archer to be added to Blood of Humans. It really is what their military needs, which will help offset the magical weakness (and weaker heat scale) of BoH.

I know you can "tweak" the number of random events in the initial game creation process. But somehow this seems a bit like cheating.

Hmm. Maybe the developers overdid it a bit weakening positive luck (and taking away one of the disadvantages of misfortune). In Dom I the further your luck scale was from neutral, the more events you got - turmoil 3 luck 3 could (sometimes) get you enough positive events to make up for the revenue hit, while order 3 misfortune 3 wasn't nearly as safe as it is now. AFAIK this effect has been totally eliminated in Dom II. Perhaps it should have merely been reduced?

[licker]

Interesting analysis Saber.

For what it's worth, here's how the scales currently work:

For each level of order there is a reduction in the likelyhood of *any* random event.

For each level of turmoil there is an increase in the likelyhood of *any* random event.

For each level of luck the chances of your random event being good are increased by 10% (so for luck 1 its 60/40, luck 2, 70/30, ...)

For each level of misfortune the chances of your random event being bad are increased by 10% (so for misfortune 1 its 40/60, 30/70, ...)

The luck scale has no bearing on the frequency of events happening, and the order scale has no bearing on the ratio of good/bad events.

I'm not sure that the 'fix' (assuming one is required) is to change the effects of those scales. Rather I think that either the frequency of events in general could be tweeked (yes, yes, normal or rare...) or that there could be an additional weight factor attached to the existing events. Already I believe that the events are classified as 'major' and 'minor' (the scale may be larger...), and as such it perhaps makes sense to restrict 'major' events to only provinces where the luck scale is at +3 or -3. Perhaps there should be a small (~5% per level of luck/misfortune) that a 'minor' event is promoted to a 'major' event. A fix like this tones down the extremes while still preserving the flavor of the scales.

Again, my concern is that cost of taking luck or misfortune (and order/turmoil) is not balanced with the current effects of the events. This has been tested to some extent by others (particularly the luck+3 turmoil+3 senario) to show that it is too risky in a competative game to go with +luck and -order, and further that order+3 misfortune+3 are probably the optimal settings for just about anyone. There's nothing de facto wrong with a set up like this, but for a game that otherwise seems to strive for interesting risk/reward senarios, having this senario be so tilted to one side belittles the achievments of the rest of the scales.