Petition to change LUCK\ORDER Scales

[Catquiet]

I have come up with a second suggestion for Luck/Order that might be easier to implement.

ORDER scale gives +/- 6% gold per tick. +/- 10% chance of random events.

LUCK scale gives +/- 4% gold per tick in addition to it's current effects.

GROWTH and PRODUCTIVITY scales would give +/- 3% gold per tick to make them more attractive.

So at +3 ORDER, -3 Luck you would have +6% gold with rare bad events.

At +3 Luck, -3 Order you would have -6% gold with more common good luck events.

What do you think? Would you consider these scale effects more balanced than what is currently in the game?

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
I'm not sure I follow the +/- rating thing. Is this the needed luck or the strength of the event? And how does the dice fit in the system?

Could you elaborate, please.

Give all events an Ars Magica style +/- rating for how good or bad they are. 0 events would be neutral, the more positive the better, the more negative the worse.

When an event happens in a province roll a d6 and subtract from it another d6 to get a "luck roll" that centers around 0. Then add the province's luck scale to skew results, and pick an event with that luck level. You'd also need to filter out inappropriate events based upon other scales, etc.

[apoger]

>What do you think? Would you consider these scale effects more balanced than what is currently in the game?

I like this suggestion.

The only change I'd make is for Production and Growth. I'd like to see these scales have more effect on... production and growth (or lack of such).

[Taqwus]

Incidentally, with regards to Luck, certain nations might have differing views on what's lucky or not...

As Soul Gate or Ashen Empire Ermor, for instance, I would not exactly be thrilled to get a bunch of militia, since their maintenance cost can be very bad for an already weak economy. A leader has to be rushed ASAP to send them to die. A lucky "dead Ermor" equivalent would probably be tombs opening up...

[trebuchet]

Luck and Ermor have always been something of an odd couple; I think trying to adjust Luck's effects to Ermor while tweaking the balance of Luck as a whole may be too difficult to worry about. But then, I may just be so accustomed to it that I am blind to what others may see as a problem.

While some of the good luck events don't effect Ermor, just as many of the bad events don't effect them either. All in all with Ashen Empire Ermor, if I take Turmoil 3 and neutral luck scale, I come out well ahead (usually).

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Catquiet:
I have come up with a second suggestion for Luck/Order that might be easier to implement.

ORDER scale gives +/- 6% gold per tick. +/- 10% chance of random events.

LUCK scale gives +/- 4% gold per tick in addition to it's current effects.

GROWTH and PRODUCTIVITY scales would give +/- 3% gold per tick to make them more attractive.

So at +3 ORDER, -3 Luck you would have +6% gold with rare bad events.

At +3 Luck, -3 Order you would have -6% gold with more common good luck events.

What do you think? Would you consider these scale effects more balanced than what is currently in the game?

I already find productivity to be crucial, and I don't think it needs to be improved. Growth needs to be improved, but maybe by having it actually cause more growth...

I don't like the ideas of the luck scale causing increased gold income, or weakening Order's gold boost. Instead, I'd like to see very high-level magic (6-10) made cheaper on pretenders to make spending points there more tempting, or graduated costs on scales (going from 0 to +3 order costing 30, 40, then 50) so that +-3 was not always the best choice.

-Cherry

P.S. Does order also cause unrest to decrease? It seems that unrest decreases faster when I choose order +3 as opposed to neutral.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Taqwus:
Incidentally, with regards to Luck, certain nations might have differing views on what's lucky or not...

As Soul Gate or Ashen Empire Ermor, for instance, I would not exactly be thrilled to get a bunch of militia, since their maintenance cost can be very bad for an already weak economy. A leader has to be rushed ASAP to send them to die. A lucky "dead Ermor" equivalent would probably be tombs opening up...

This can be dealt with fairly easily, as a similar mechanism already exists for making sure some events won't happen unless the scales are right. For example, militia events could be marked as "not Ashen Empire, Carrion Woords, etc".

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
I don't like the ideas of the luck scale causing increased gold income, or weakening Order's gold boost. Instead, I'd like to see very high-level magic (6-10) made cheaper on pretenders to make spending points there more tempting, or graduated costs on scales (going from 0 to +3 order costing 30, 40, then 50) so that +-3 was not always the best choice.

These changes still leave order the dominant scale... Addressing the strength of order relative to the other scales is very much the issue. How would you suggest making the other scales more viable relative to order?

Graduating the costs of scales is attractive to me however, and 30/40/50 seems reasonable.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Jasper:
How would you suggest making the other scales more viable relative to order?

I think Production is fine and Heat/Cold is fine (though morale effects would be nice). Growth is underpowered, and would be better (and more thematic) if it offered more growth, not more gold. Or maybe cheaper cavalry, since grass and horses flourish...=) No, seriously.

I see magic as weak, too. Drain is crippling, since it gives increasing detriments, while magic gives decreasing returns...

So, if you use magic-2 units as researchers, going from drain-3 to magic-3 is like this:

Scale.......Research......Design Points
-3..................1.......................+40
-2..................2.......................+40
-1..................3.......................+40
+0.................4.......................0
+1.................5.......................-40
+2.................6.......................-40
+3.................7.......................-40

...not very balanced. The move from -3 to -2 costs 40 points, but is WAY more valuable than the move from +2 to +3 which is almost worthless even with weak researchers. Now if Magic/Drain increased or decreased gem output from magic sites... yes. THAT would make it a vital scale. 10% per tick would work (and of course gem output would have to be randomized, so that a site giving 3 Earth gems, in Drain-3, would have three 70% chances of giving an earth gem each turn, averaging 2.1 gems per turn).

Alternately (or in addition), the cost could be rescaled, like this:

Scale.......Research......Design Points
-3..................1.......................+55
-2..................2.......................+50
-1..................3.......................+45
+0.................4.......................0
+1.................5.......................-45
+2.................6.......................-40
+3.................7.......................-35

Thus, the cost of Magic-3 would stay 120, but the benefit of Drain-3 would move to 150... and the previously less-tempting ends of the scale would both look more attractive.

As for making order less prone to extremes, rescaling the cost or reducing the event interference might help. +-1 Order causing -+5% event probability rather than +-10% might help, and partially decouple the luck/order link.

-Cherry

[Catquiet]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

I don't like the ideas of the luck scale causing increased gold income, or weakening Order's gold boost.

At the moment, even with common random events, events don't happen often enough to make + Luck worthwhile. If they increased the frequency of random events or made good events a whole lot better, Dominions II would depend too much on chance. That would take away from the strategy part of the game.

The +/- gold from the LUCK scale would represent all the tiny events that affect the income of your peasants but aren't quite newsworthy. One farmer's plow horse goes lame, moths get into a silk merchant's warehouse, ect. It all adds up.

Currently ORDER has the most important scale effect in the game. Positive ORDER also reduces the good and bad effects of LUCK. Together these things make LUCK very unattractive, it needs a +/- gold bonus to make it viable.