Balance: Some thoughts on Events and Scales

[johan osterman]

Not sure that I am reading you right but some of you sounds like do not believe the probability of a nation recieving events is based number of provinces. It is. I do not remember the exact mechanic but there is a chance for each province to generate an event, just that the maximum event number is capped at 3.

[Agrajag]

johan osterman said:
Not sure that I am reading you right but some of you sounds like do not believe the probability of a nation recieving events is based number of provinces. It is. I do not remember the exact mechanic but there is a chance for each province to generate an event, just that the maximum event number is capped at 3.

tinkthank said:
- Make events occur on a per-province, not per-nation basis. If a nation has 200 provinces, 100 events per turn would not be unthinkable under a Turmoil scale.

This is the part of his message causing all the conflict, no one said it isnt based on provinces (or atleast not outright, you could consider the original message to say that even though it doesnt directly say it.)

[sushiboat]

Raising the cap a little would be Ok with me. Suppose the cap became the square root of the number of provinces owned. 9 provinces would get up to 3 random events, 100 provinces would get up to 10 random events, and 400 provinces would get up to 20 random events.

[tinkthank]

johan osterman said:
Not sure that I am reading you right but some of you sounds like do not believe the probability of a nation recieving events is based number of provinces. It is. I do not remember the exact mechanic but there is a chance for each province to generate an event, just that the maximum event number is capped at 3.

Yes, but it doesn't feel like it is proportional.
Especially under Turmoil (when playing S&A for example) we can notice an event in our capital often.
Having an empire which is 20 to 50 times the size of the starting empire should have many more events -- not just maximally three times more.
I see why capping events at 3 makes sense in a lot of situations; it prevents information overflow and it keeps the "Message" screen from getting bogged down.
I think with a different type of Empire Control UI, as talked about in different places, this would no longer need be in place.
Conceivably, one could even have a setting under "Game Setup" which lets the "Maximum number of Events" be capped at a value other than the default, which I could imagine being somewhere around 50 to 100. To re-emphasize: 100 events per month would probably ONLY ever be seen in a HUGE empire the size of more than half the Faerun map WITH VERY HIGH TURMOIL -- you get what you pay for. And certainly, without some "Event Screen" and an "Event Overview", this may be a bummer.
Additional suggestions could also include Automatic Miniscript Options (such as: IF *unrest at X* THEN set taxes to /Y/) to automatically deal with Brigands and such.
Since people who need to take Turmoil and might invest in Luck should not be "screwed", I think that counting on 10 events per turn (which I think makes sense for an empire with a *size of 30 provinces with high turmoil*) is not unreasonable. Similarly, having a large, lucky empire of about 100 provinces (huge map, endgame) should also still *be able to* (stress on the modal operator) net 5 or so events per turn.

ANYHOW: I would like to emphasize the second point I was trying to make: There could be a lot more neato events which require Production (or sloth -- imagine: Your workers at Mine Y have gone on strike: Resources are 0 for this month/ gold los Q for this turn) or something else could be made more in-depth.

[Endoperez]

sushiboat said:
Raising the cap a little would be Ok with me. Suppose the cap became the square root of the number of provinces owned. 9 provinces would get up to 3 random events, 100 provinces would get up to 10 random events, and 400 provinces would get up to 20 random events.

Always atleast one.
4 provinces for maximum of 2 events.
9 provinces for maximum of 3 events.
16 provinces for maximum of 4 events.
25 provinces for maximum of 5 events.
36 provinces for maximum of 6 events.
49 provinces for maximum of 7 events.
64 provinces for maximum of 8 events.
81 provinces for maximum of 9 events.
100 provinces for maximum of 10 events.

With this system, you might have more than 3 events by turn 15 (?) or so. However, you won't get more than six events before 36 provinces, and the number of maximum events grows ever more slowly after that. I don't know if this would be balanced, but I like this idea!