If it aint broke, don't fix it

As Johan stated; there is nothing obvious right now except for the fact that if you do pick one, more than likely you choose a scale of 3. Because for the negative effecs on most of the scales you discount/counter whatever the effect is to balance it.

If someone can show me a race that plays with Turmoil 3, Unluck 3 and can get away with it; that isn't Ermor I'd like to see it And be competitive.

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
*Edit: what I do think is a problem, is that the obvious choices are +3 -3 or -3 +3.

I agree - well, except for Magic/Drain, where +-2 is probably better than +-3. But graduating the scale costs, the way high pretender magic costs are graduated, would help.

[Zapmeister]

What interesting choices are you refering to? How do you now that all people use the same or very similar scale settings?

Of course I don't. I'm speculating that this is what will happen if everyone draws the same conclusions as myself and many other posters to the forum. Excuse me if my tone was more provocative than is warranted, but it did get your attention

In dom1 if you wanted to play in an MP game cranking up your growth and production scales to 3 was almost a foregone choice.

Could be (although I didn't). To fix that, and the more general problem of people always choosing +3/-3, make the cost/bonus of +/- 1,2,3 rise in a non-linear way, e.g. 20 for +1, 20+40=60 for +2 and 20+40+60=120 for +3. The effects should still change linearly, though.

There was an awful lot of complaints about the tax/patrol complex, including that order increased viable tax rate rather than taxes thus increasing MM.

I think the idea of trashing the overtaxed population was a good one, dealing with this issue well IMHO.

Also the positive scale effects where so beneficial that there were no reason to invest more than leftover design points into your pretender.

See my suggestion above. If +3 is expensive enough, points will go to the pretender.

Also I think it is advisable to wait with tampering once again with the scale settings, at least until more MP games have been played and there is a little more dom2 MP game experience in the player base.

Perhaps. But I think single-player experience, of which we have a fair bit now, will prove to be an accurate guide to what we conclude from MP. But yes, we can wait.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

quote:

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Originally posted by johan osterman:
*Edit: what I do think is a problem, is that the obvious choices are +3 -3 or -3 +3.

I agree - well, except for Magic/Drain, where +-2 is probably better than +-3. But graduating the scale costs, the way high pretender magic costs are graduated, would help.

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I think it's only order/luck that this applies to, and only because of the way they interact: your order setting can greatly magnify or diminish the effect of your luck setting, but doesn't affect its cost. Since order 3 misfortune 3 doesn't cost any more than order 1 misfortune 1, and may actually have LESS bad events (I don't remember; although certainly less good events too, and no national heroes) in addition to higher income, there's no reason not to go all the way.

Maybe the effect of order/turmoil on random event frequency should be diminished (perhaps simultaneously with bringing back the DomI effect of luck on event frequency). Order 3 misfortune 3 would still give you extra income for 0 nation points, but you'd actually have to worry about negative events. Turmoil 3 luck 3 would give you about as many events as it does now (assuming half the event frequency modifier is taken away from order and given to luck), the same bias toward good events, and the same income hit. (Therefore it would remain non-viable if very very bad events aren't prevented by sufficiently high luck.)

But intermediate and/or mixed settings would have their good points too. Turmoil 1/luck 1 wouldn't give you as many events as turmoil 3/luck 3 (or as much of a bias toward good ones), but you'd have more steady income and not be so reliant on good events to keep the cash coming in.

On the other hand, with temperature you generally want to take your race's preferred temperature (or occasionally a more extreme Version), there are valid reasons for any level of growth/death depending on race, theme and strategy, and we already discussed (on this or another thread) the low appeal of high magic. (I don't think the -1 MR is a benefit worth the points; it applies to both sides. I have no hard information about the effect on fatigue costs, but again, both sides benefit, so the benefit to the god spending points on it isn't that great.)