Poll: Is misfortune really a dump scale?

[Morsigil]

Misfortune poll[doodle.com]

I'm interested in getting people's opinions on misfortune scales both through the poll and anecdotally.

To clarify the poll: One of the options is "I only take misfortune with order-3" and that is order 3, not order -3, or turmoil.

I've seen a number of people state that with the changes to the event pool misfortune is desirable because there was a large addition of innocuous events. Personally I am not seeing it. My own anecdotal experience has been that misfortune 3 is incredibly painful even with order 3 scales, which was no more apparent than in my last MP game. Before anyone accuses me of being upset because I didn't do well or anything like that I will point out that I actually won that game.

In said game I took order 3, sloth 3, heat 3, growth 3, and misfortune 3 as MA Bandar Log. Misfortune 3 wasn't my only complaint about my scale choices, but it was by far the scale I had the biggest issue with. I lost something in the range of 12-15 provinces over the course of a 48 or 49 turn game. Knights, barbarians, troglodytes, wolves, you name it. The most common was knights, of all things. I must have had 6 knight attacks.

At one point this happened: During a war, 20 fiends of darkness holding a bane venom charm hid in a province with 100+ income and 50 or so resources in my cap ring. Before I could spare the resources to patrol and fight 20 fiends of darkness while taking disease losses, knights attacked and killed my patrolling forces and PD. The next turn another knight attack took the province next door, also in my cap ring, and also another 90+ gold province.

Fighting a very large Jotunheim, I lost those provinces for 10 or so turns, unable to recapture them, equating about 2000 gold. The province with the bane venom charm was effectively lost for good. It went from 10k population to 1k by the end. All game long I was recapturing provinces, meanwhile fending off raiders. Sometime around turn 30 I lost a province with 12k population to a manikin event. That province just disappeared.. 11.5k people gone in a blink of an eye, down to 500.

Between all of the events I estimate I lost about 8,000-10,000 gold. Here's the event that really took the cake though: my prophet was leaving one throne and on his way to another when he was cut off by a province loss event. He went through two provinces, and the next turn he was going to travel through 2 more and capture the final throne along with my pretender at another one, but of all the provinces I could have lost that turn, of about 32 provinces, the one between my prophet and the throne was suddenly invaded by, you guessed it, knights. If my prophet had been able to travel 2-4 more movement points than he had he would have been killed. Instead of winning in 3 turns it took me 5, which could have cost me the game if not for some ironically lucky diplomacy.

Thoughts? Comments? I've been feeling a little gaslit by the "Misfortune is a dump scale" comments.

[Althaea]

I most commonly take Luck 3. I very rarely end up regretting this decision.

Of course, some nations desperately need to take points from somewhere to afford an Awake Expander or monster to help them expand reliably and defend them from early enemies. But I've always viewed awakes as a crutch. Some nations need them early on, but you're ultimately better off without them. In any case, if you need that crutch, Misfortune is one of the easier places to get them, though I'd say that Turmoil is a safer bet for many nations, especially if you can afford a point or two of Luck in exchange.

The treatment of Misfortune as being essentially free points and Luck as being essentially wasted points has always struck me as armchair theory. My own experiences have never born this out.

And that's completely neglecting national heroes. Not all nations have any of those worth having, but a lot of them do.

[zmo]

You can't attribute every bad event that occured to your misfortune scales. Some of those you could have experienced even if you were running luck 3. That said, I do agree that the current meta seems to underestimate how harmful misfortune 3 is. I'll only take it when I have some way to mitigate it, like if I was already going to take order scales anyway or I'm playing a nation with a lot of fortune tellers. Conversely, I'll only invest in luck if I'm also taking turmoil or playing a nation with must-have national heroes.

[ÆtherNomad]

Luck is good and Misfortune is definitely not something you can take without thinking about it, although in many cases it still is okay to dump it, especially when you need points for a big bless and don't use Turmoil. I however firmly believe that the Order 3 - Misfortune 3 "combo" is extremely bad unless you REALLY need all that Order for the recruitment points, in complete independance of unrest, gold income and event frequency. There are several reasons for this:
- Order always fails to reduce event likelihood in a meaningful way compared to how much Misfortune increases it; hence, it's a REALLY bad idea to spend 120 points just for this;
- Order's effect on income is really low (which is part of the reason why Order is in itself a very bad scale);
- Bonus recruitment points are pretty much useless for many nations (which is part of the reason why Order is in itself a very bad scale).
Hence, "you can just take Order 3 to reduce the effect of Misfortune 3" is NEVER a good argument. The "combo" effect of Order + Misfortune is just a very small and circumstancial bonus if you happen to take high Order anyway. But neutral Order + neutral Luck is in almost every case better than Order 3 - Misfortune 3, for the same price.

[Cryle]

order 3 misfortune 3 is a noob trap because that actually unlocks a bunch of events. you want neutral order (-1 to +1 order to be precise) to actually get use out of 3mf

[six-P-]

I don't know if misfortune 3 was stealth nerfed recently or something, but I am finding Turmoil 3 Misfortune 3 significantly more painful than Turmoil 3 Misfortune 2.

[meglobob1]

I NEVER take misfotune...I hates it...hates it I tell you...

[Twogun]

six p-why would you combine turmoil with misfortune? that seems absolutely suicidal

[Kid Icarus]

I tend to only take misfortune on nations that I want order on for recruitment and who have fortune tellers. I just like luck too much. It can be so amazing, for example...

I just started a game with Nazca and the very first province I captured had a fort event the next turn. So I had a second fort on turn 4. Turn 6 I got the First Couple national hero, has about 3 mages worth of research points, can summon 2 sacred supayas per turn and has great magic paths. Maybe not game winning but it feels like a significant boost for a nation I generally have trouble with in the expansion phase.

It seems extra lucky, but L3 has made me a happy mummy in this case :)

[sunbeam]

Originally posted by Kid Icarus:

I tend to only take misfortune on nations that I want order on for recruitment and who have fortune tellers.

I have to agree with this. Protect the labs and therefore the gems (most of the times) and things hurt a lot less.

If you have a nation like Vanheim that can recruit (or summon easily) units that can roll into a barb revolt province and take it back, it hurts a lot less even.

But if you have to march a whole stinking expeditionary force out to deal with something like that (then move them back) it is a lot more of a PITA.

[Alias]

Misfortune is better on nations that can react fast to the bad events.

Luck is better when initial sitesearching will be poor.

[Mali Belizec]

My favourite scales are luck and growth. I never take misfortune regardless of the nation. Might not be the optimal choice but that is how I like to play.

[OhNoes]

I have got a -9000+ people left my capital event at turn 12 in MP game. As MA Bandar log i can only recruit 3 tigers instead of 4 per turn now. Got 3 misfortune scales.

[ncarr99]

Occasionally I can persuade myself to take misfortune 1 if I really need the extra points. But almost always I will try to put at least one point in fortune instead. The few times I have gone for a full fortune commitment i.e. turmoil 3 fortune 3 have worked out well for me, particularly I had this go fantastically as Lanka in Dom 4.

[sunbeam]

Another angle to the Misfortune thing is national heroes. Some nations have heroes that if they show up or not, no one really cares.

Others have heroes that are game changing.

MA Ulm is totally cool with going Order 3/some Misfortune and never seeing their national heroes.

MA T'ien Ch'i or MA Agartha on the other hand have some serious heroes. Immortal, SC caliber, or add a significant amount of magic power/crafting.

[TehArgz]

Originally posted by sunbeam:

Another angle to the Misfortune thing is national heroes. Some nations have heroes that if they show up or not, no one really cares.

Others have heroes that are game changing.

MA Ulm is totally cool with going Order 3/some Misfortune and never seeing their national heroes.

MA T'ien Ch'i or MA Agartha on the other hand have some serious heroes. Immortal, SC caliber, or add a significant amount of magic power/crafting.

What he said.
Other than that I find luck to be pretty underwhelming. Sux to have invested points in luck and still have to fight thru negative events. When playing Tien chi and an immortal shows up on turn three, then it is worth it. (Especially with worthy heroes mod)