Luck/Misfortune Nerf.

[HoneyBadger]

Hi all.
Don't you hate it when you don't even have any misfortune and you still lose your lab or temple (or both). Or when your population is cut in half, and then in quarters, and then in 8ths, all within the first 3 years of the game?
I do. It's the one thing that does put me in favor of some kind of save game feature.

I'd really like to see this fixed so that, unless you actually have taken misfortune scales, you won't suffer a great misfortune for the first 3 years of the game.

Sure, I don't have a problem with witch's curses, rains of toads, or barbarian hordes, but I think that a minimum of Luck 0 should grant you a little breather from any totally ruinous disasters for the first 3 years into the game.

It's especially bad in a MP game because either you're well on your way out, or everybody else has to change their playing style to prevent you getting killed.

If you take Misfortune, you asked for it and your on your own, but I think it's reasonable to expect to not have your game randomly rendered fairly unenjoyable through no fault and no in-game bad luck of your own.

Three years is a reasonable amount of time for any competent player to be able to build a nation which can survive the worst that ill-luck can throw at you, meaning that instead of coming down to randomness, we'll see more games coming down to strategy.

Thanks.

[Taqwus]

Maybe even letting magnitude of events vary, so that the massively *good* events also aren't occurring for some period -- in this case, the price of the Luck/Misfortune scale would need to sharply decline in non-large games.

[HoneyBadger]

I totally agree with that one. If you haven't picked any Luck scales, you shouldn't be getting 3000 gold, a handful of fire gems, and a magic item, for atleast 3 years into the game.

It's hard to adjust the price of luck/misfortune, or any scales, because they all are set to cost 40 points per level. That means changes to them need to be done to the business end, rather than the input end, and that can be tricky. It would be nice if scales reflected upon the size of a starting map, the number of nations, how large your nation happens to be at a given time, etc. The above 3000 gold ++ is fantastic if you get it the first turn, but not quite as good when you own 2/3rds of the map and gold's like water to you.

Dynamic scales I imagine would be a programming nightmare, though.

[Ygorl]

I guess I wouldn't mind seeing some of the more far-out events limited to those nations with far-out luck (good or bad). It's not really the case that a run of bad luck means the game is totally over, though... For example, in a multiplayer game, I lost 2/3 of my home population in the first two turns, and then suffered massive unrest in the third turn - with no misfortune scales! My income was decimated, but I made friends with my neighbors, survived, and am now one of the stronger nations in the game. Single-player is different, of course, but single-player it's not such a big deal to start a new game if you get hosed ten minutes into it.

[Micah]

As long as both the really good and really bad events were both restricted to appropriate scales the costs wouldn't have to change, since middle of the road scales would lose both the good and bad effects. If anything the scale tips should be worth MORE points, since luck 3 would keep the good but lose the chance for bad events, and vice versa.

[Gandalf Parker]

You dont feel that misfortune is a useable tactic? Besides getting points for it, you can do your empires business outside of your domain and then push the bad domain strongly onto your enemies.

Of couse that doesnt work so well on small blitz games.