Petition to change LUCK\ORDER Scales

[mr.white]

I think the main issue here is that the event system is broken. That skews the whole view of order since it has the additional benefit of disaster-protection, which you can't get any other way. I'm not so sure that it's too good without that aspect.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:

quote:

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Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
Having them modify the chances of units gaining afflictions in lucky/unluck provinces, though... that would be interesting too.

Hmm, that could be interesting. But I think having it affect both sides indiscriminately might largely negate the effect

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I really like this idea, and it sure hasn't to work indiscriminately. A positive luck scale should lower your chances to get afflictions only if you're fighting in your own dominion (just like you don't benefit from your neighbor's luck wrt events). It could even go further: luck could increase the chances for the enemy to get afflictions if he's fighting in your dominion.

On the same vein, I remember someone suggested a lucky dominion should give a bit of luck to your units, as long as they remain in your dominion - like the Luck spell, but only 5%/tick instead of 50%. I thought that was a cute idea.

Also, I wouldn't call Machaka a light-unit nation. I make extensive use of spider knights and black hunters

I could do without the spiders, I couldn't without the hoplites.

[apoger]

There have been many well thought out and excellent ideas here. Problem is that most of them are complex. It is hard to balance new complexity. Furthmore complexity is a very hard sell to Illwinter. I'm interested in seeing a fix this century.

To that end I offer the follwing thoughts.
The main issue is that dire events are -NOT FUN-. Nobody losses 10K population at the capital and thinks "Wow! I love Dominions". Secondly these events are not balanced. There is no 'population is increased by 10K' event. Gaining a cloak of displacement is sweet, but is no compenstation for the more serious dire events. These events add nothing to the game. I say a simple way to address the issue would be to *delete* them. It would only make the game better. Nobody would miss these events. Losing labs and chunks of gold is more than bad enough.

Without these catastrophic events, I suspect that Turmiol/Luck might be more balanced in respect to Order/Misfortune.

This might not be the best solution, but it is simple, and easy to implement. Often that has a 'magic' of it's own.

[Treebeard]

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:
On the same vein, I remember someone suggested a lucky dominion should give a bit of luck to your units, as long as they remain in your dominion - like the Luck spell, but only 5%/tick instead of 50%. I thought that was a cute idea.[/QB]

You know, that's a pretty good idea. Perhaps tone it down to 3-4% per level of luck.

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by apoger:
Without these catastrophic events, I suspect that Turmiol/Luck might be more balanced in respect to Order/Misfortune.

This might not be the best solution, but it is simple, and easy to implement. Often that has a 'magic' of it's own.

This is the conculusion I have been moving towards with this debate. Nerf or remove the worst events.

Cheers

Keir

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
I see no problem with the current heat/cold, productivity/sloth or growth/death scales. Different nations, themes and strategies have good reasons to take different positions on these scales, which IMO is how it should be. I have seen and played anything from +3 to -3 and consider them all viable for the right strategy. I wish I could say that for turmoil, magic, drain and luck. Any turmoil is likely to hose you, luck isn't worth the points, high magic isn't worth the points and high drain is too crippling except for standard Ulm. [/QB]

I have been experimenting with a very wide range of designs than simply because Bless effects are new and I want to try them out.

I have taken drain 3 heaps with Dom II and will continue to do so. I consider it to be the best choice for the majority of race designs I'm looking at right now. When you have 0pts (or less) after designing your pretender you end up with some funky scales and a huge amount of research coming out of the (sometimes immobile) pretender (28 one time!) so drain 3 is one of the first negative scale choices. I would have to say though that I am having a harder time finding sage sites than I in Dom1 which is a worry.

I agree with you Chris though on the rest of the scales.

cheers

Keir

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Jasper:

quote:

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Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
I is not in Dom II, but I'm starting to believe it should be. There is a risk of a turmoil/luck default with this setting, but the use for luck-0 is more obvious and order/misfortune-3 is less viable.

Ack, it's not!? No wonder luck seems worse to me than it should be, and misfortune better! This was a very thematic effect in Dom 1, and certainly wasn't overpowered.

Returning it would be a definite improvement, with IMHO no chance of unbalancing turmoil/luck. Order 3 gives 13/7 the income of Turmoil 3 -- a nearly insurmountable difference! Even were Order/Turmoil changed to 5% income change per level this would IMHO still not be a problem.

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Order/turmoil was already chagned to 7% per step in Dom II, so Order 3 gives 121/79 the income of Turmoil 3 - a huge difference, but what do you expect for 240 nation points? You can get a new path to 9 with most pretenders for that many points. Or buy 6 other positive scales (luck, growth and magic all come to mind as possibilities - at least if the current problems with luck are fixed).

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:

quote:

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Originally posted by Chris Byler:
I see no problem with the current heat/cold, productivity/sloth or growth/death scales. Different nations, themes and strategies have good reasons to take different positions on these scales, which IMO is how it should be. I have seen and played anything from +3 to -3 and consider them all viable for the right strategy. I wish I could say that for turmoil, magic, drain and luck. Any turmoil is likely to hose you, luck isn't worth the points, high magic isn't worth the points and high drain is too crippling except for standard Ulm.

I have been experimenting with a very wide range of designs than simply because Bless effects are new and I want to try them out.

I have taken drain 3 heaps with Dom II and will continue to do so. I consider it to be the best choice for the majority of race designs I'm looking at right now. When you have 0pts (or less) after designing your pretender you end up with some funky scales and a huge amount of research coming out of the (sometimes immobile) pretender (28 one time!) so drain 3 is one of the first negative scale choices. I would have to say though that I am having a harder time finding sage sites than I in Dom1 which is a worry.

I agree with you Chris though on the rest of the scales.

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Many cheap mages can't research at all in drain 3. I generally don't want to use my pretender as a researcher except in the first year or so, and I certainly don't want to be stuck in a situation where he is my only effective researcher ever (or I need to use celestial masters or archtheurgs to research because they are hit least by the drain scale). It's even worse if all your mages are horrendously expensive (Jotunheim except Utgard) or all your mages with decent magic are horrendously expensive (standard Pangaea - dryads can't research in strong drain).

I just had a new idea for making high magic scales more rewarding and cool; I'm going to start another thread with it since this one is supposed to be about luck/order.

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
Many cheap mages can't research at all in drain 3. I generally don't want to use my pretender as a researcher except in the first year or so, and I certainly don't want to be stuck in a situation where he is my only effective researcher ever (or I need to use celestial masters or archtheurgs to research because they are hit least by the drain scale). It's even worse if all your mages are horrendously expensive (Jotunheim except Utgard) or all your mages with decent magic are horrendously expensive (standard Pangaea - dryads can't research in strong drain).

I just had a new idea for making high magic scales more rewarding and cool; I'm going to start another thread with it since this one is supposed to be about luck/order.

I think starting a new thread is a good idea. Your idea's for improving magic are very interesting but would require careful balencing. I think magic is a bit weak in the early game but too powerful later.

The reason I don't care much about drain 3 is that the majority of my present batch of races work on the theory that they start with awesome magic (bless effects) which other players will not achieve anything like for ages. By the time they do hopefully you have found sages who really don't care about scales that much. As long as I can crash up the reasearch ladder later, for wards etc, through mass input of gold the weaker starting scale is ok. My pretender can hit the few improtant early targets. Getting to con 4 for summer lions/fallbears etc is not a big deal anymore while starting with blessed monstrosities is pretty impressive - still its early days yet so its all preliminary assessments for now.

Ciao

Keir

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Catquiet:
Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

quote:

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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.

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On the contrary, events happen quite often. The reason luck isn't attractive is that events aren't consistently positive even with strong luck, and the few crippling events (e.g. flood in home province - although I've seen it in the first year, it is crippling anytime; banning it from the first X turns wouldn't help enough) far outweigh the handful of extra gems or free militia.

That, and order is too valuable for its gold boost. Change it to +/-5% gold, +/-5% events, and make some of the worst events misfortune-only, and I think you'd go a long way toward fixing the order/luck problems.

Magic is another issue - as Saber points out, high levels of drain produce proportionally more decrease in research while high levels of magic produce proportionally less increase.

I'd like to see one or more of the following:
* more gems per site in magic (including home sites) - as Saber proposed
* reduced empowerment cost in magic (+/-10% per scale? Empowerment is pretty rare so you need a big effect to be noticeable)
* reduced ritual/forge cost in magic (+/-5% per scale? Ulm Smiths immune to drain for forging, perhaps not for rituals.)

obviously with the opposite effects in drain.

High levels of magic should make you a magical powerhouse, which currently they don't really - the dominant factor is your gem/slave income, which depends mostly on how many provinces you control and what mages you have available to search them. Research plays a part but not that big a part - and high magic levels don't help research that much anyway.

If magic scale influences gem income, it should influence blood hunting as well. Give Abysia somewhere to put all those points. Of course if the cost reduction approach is taken instead, it would already affect blood magic just like other paths.

I see no problem with the current heat/cold, productivity/sloth or growth/death scales. Different nations, themes and strategies have good reasons to take different positions on these scales, which IMO is how it should be. I have seen and played anything from +3 to -3 and consider them all viable for the right strategy. I wish I could say that for turmoil, magic, drain and luck. Any turmoil is likely to hose you, luck isn't worth the points, high magic isn't worth the points and high drain is too crippling except for standard Ulm.