Remove ads

I'm a High Fantasy Tax Collector, So What? A CKII Tax Collector Quest

Reader mode
Good lord, the salt. :eyeroll:

I'm okay with this. It sucks we missed on Oskaria and the RER really hurts, but the rest of the important rolls were a nice hit. I'm fine with using - not losing - the boon. It increased our odds, we lost anyways. I'd rather that than have them sit in our inventory, and finish the game with 1000 unused elixirs.
 
BelligerentGnu said:
I'm fine with using - not losing - the boon.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It was a waste of a Minor Boon. It got expended on a needless risky action for uncertain gain rather than going for more certain rewards at lower risk. As I predicted, going for the Spirit of Oskaria turned out to be an unnecessary mistake that came at the cost of actually useful actions.
 
OK but @Oshha , you have said this three times now. Please, just calm down and stop being bitter about this.

Minor boons only increase the chance of success on an action by +10%. When you spend one, it only makes a difference 10% of the time.

If you pick a low-risk action that was almost sure to succeed, then the roll will probably succeed anyway, in which case the boon is 'wasted.'

If you pick a high-risk action that has a substantial chance of failure (say, 30-40% or more), then there is a very real chance that the roll will be too low and the boon will, again, be 'wasted.'

Ninety percent of the goddamn time, the boon will be 'wasted.' Will have no mechanical effect on events. A boon is not a "save your dice roll in a can" option. It is a "might help, probably won't" option, unless you stack up several of them, which I don't know if you even can. That's why we get 'em in six-packs; they're not worth that much by themselves.

So repetitive, embittered commentary on how we "wasted a boon" is not helping anyone. Either we never spend them ever again, or we accept that when we do spend them there is a 90% chance they won't make a difference. Since they are absolutely fucking useless if not spent, so far as I can determine, the choice should be obvious.
 
Last edited:
Simon_Jester said:
OK but @Oshha , you have said this like four times now. Please, just calm down and stop being bitter about this.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I am calm and I will stop pushing my side of the argument when other people stop pushing their side of it. I see no reason why I should be the one to throw in the towel when you and the people on your side can do it instead if you want to stop talking about it. But so long as other people keep wanting to talk about this, so will I.

Simon_Jester said:
So repetitive, embittered commentary on how we "wasted a boon" is not helping anyone. Either we never spend them ever again, or we accept that when we do spend them there is a 90% chance they won't make a difference. Since they are absolutely fucking useless if not spent, so far as I can determine, the choice should be obvious.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I disagree as the main benefit of a Minor Boon is reducing the luck element in a plan. Using a Minor Boon to turn an action with a low chance of failure to make it guaranteed pass or near-guaranteed is an acceptable use of a Boon as it minimises the random factor in the action and allows us to make stable plans that don't revolve around the whims of the dice anymore than they do outside of random events. On the flip side, using a Minor Boon on an action that will still require a medium or high roll to pass is a waste of the Boon as you are still leaving up to chance.

If you are going to still leave it up to the randoms of the dice rolls, you might as well save the Minor Boon for when you don't. The only exception to this is a critically important action where you need to pass it or face disaster. The Spirit of Oskaria action does not fall under that as it a high DC action with no clear gain to it outside unfounded speculation of how powerful a national spirit would be in the future.

Simon_Jester said:
unless you stack up several of them, which I don't know if you even can.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

We cannot. We can only use one Free Action and one Minor Boon on any action.
 
The Spirit of Oskaria wasn't a very likely roll, but it was a really cool idea that appealed to people and they thought it'd be fun. At least, that was why I liked it. Why I still do like it.
 
Oshha said:
I am calm and I will stop pushing my side of the argument when other people stop pushing their side of it. I see no reason why I should be the one to throw in the towel when you and the people on your side can do it instead if you want to stop talking about it. But so long as other people keep wanting to talk about this, so will I.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I didn't even participate in the last vote.

I disagree as the main benefit of a Minor Boon is reducing the luck element in a plan. Using a Minor Boon to turn an action with a low chance of failure to make it guaranteed pass or near-guaranteed is an acceptable use of a Boon as it minimises the random factor in the action and allows us to make stable plans that don't revolve around the whims of the dice anymore than they do outside of random events. On the flip side, using a Minor Boon on an action that will still require a medium or high roll to pass is a waste of the Boon as you are still leaving up to chance.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If you spend ten minor boons on ten high-risk actions, nine of them will change nothing, and the tenth will turn a success into a failure.

If you spend ten minor boons on ten low-risk actions, nine of them will change nothing, and the tenth will turn a success into a failure.

A minor boon is no more or less 'wasted' when spent on an action that was overwhelmingly likely to pass anyway than when spent on an action that fails. Either way, it's still gone. Its expenditure is not somehow retroactively justified by the action succeeding, or "super-wasted" somehow if the action fails.

What you buy by spending minor boons only on actions with an 80-90% chance of prior success isn't, y'know, success. It's peace of mind. But peace of mind is a private thing that belongs to you personally. Other people who are more willing to occasionally fail an action may not value it so much. And frankly, this game is balanced so that we will fail actions sometimes. It's inevitable; you can't buy enough peace of mind to ensure that everything works every time.

If you are going to still leave it up to the randoms of the dice rolls, you might as well save the Minor Boon for when you don't. The only exception to this is a critically important action where you need to pass it or face disaster. The Spirit of Oskaria action does not fall under that as it a high DC action with no clear gain to it outside unfounded speculation of how powerful a national spirit would be in the future.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Would you tend to strongly agree, weakly agree, weakly disagree, or strongly disagree with the following statement:

"If I don't want something, I think it's objectively useless."

We cannot. We can only use one Free Action and one Minor Boon on any action.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
As I suspected.

Lukepop said:
The Spirit of Oskaria wasn't a very likely roll, but it was a really cool idea that appealed to people and they thought it'd be fun. At least, that was why I liked it. Why I still do like it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I for one am tentatively in favor. The fact that there is no national spirit may be one of the big things wrong with the country of Oskaria in this setting- because the nation has nothing to speak up for its collective interest in a coherent way, while everything IN the nation does have things to speak up for it.
 
Last edited:
Simon_Jester said:
What you buy by spending minor boons only on actions with an 80-90% chance of prior success isn't, y'know, success. It's peace of mind. But peace of mind is a private thing that belongs to you personally. Other people who are more willing to occasionally fail an action may not value it so much.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

And so I will continue to disagree with them because I consider that to be a waste of a Boon. I also disagree that it is just about peace of mind. Being able to know that certain actions will succeed allows you to plan around that. For example, if I take the Stewardship that resolves a situation and make certain it succeeds, I don't need to worry about doing the Diplo or Intrigue actions which do the same and can spend our Diplo and Intrigue actions on other options. Furthermore, if a situation can be certain to be dealt with in the current turn, I can begin to take actions that progress other things or begin preparing to do stuff in future months.

Simon_Jester said:
Would you tend to strongly agree, weakly agree, weakly disagree, or strongly disagree with the following statement:

"If I don't want something, I think it's objectively useless."
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Strongly disagree. I am quite willingly to acknowledge that things I don't want have benefits and I disagree with the idea that any action is useless hence why I have not been the one using that word. A waste, sure, but every action has at least some benefit even if that benefit isn't always going to be meaningful or worthwhile. For example, the Justice piety action was something I didn't want, but I wouldn't deny that it was useless since it has a track record of being beneficial and we got strong evidence to say that it would be useful. Or the Diplo or Intrigue actions with the Church. I don't want to spend money on bribing the Church, but it is pretty clear that having them in our camp would definitely be useful.

However, I would say that actions like A Show of Force or Diplomatic Solutions are a waste because they are currently too high to a reliable chance of success and we are better off focusing on more easily accomplished actions which will either make them easier or otherwise resolve the situation. The Duty to Oskaria also falls into this category as it requires too much effort to accomplish something for uncertain reward and comes at the cost of expending that effort on other actions. I will also note that the DC of an action is not indicative of how likely to be useful if it success, just how hard it is. An action with plenty of benefit could have a low DC due to being easy to accomplish while a not very useful action could have a high DC because it has been hard.
 
Haha...I am enjoying these rolls so much. Granted it's probably costing us some achievements, but...so what?

I am honestly kinda happy that we have a small bad luck streak going on with the RER section. It's nice when everything goes according to plan, but...from time to time it's equally as fun when our plans fail or a new threat emerges. The only thing we need for a good story is already in our possession, namely a good author/OP. Seriously I give @huhYeahGoodPoint a 10/10 for all his efforts.

Just wanted to say that.
 
Oshha said:
And so I will continue to disagree with them because I consider that to be a waste of a Boon.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
If you hate failing actions that much, you are probably playing the wrong game. Huh has explicitly balanced this game with the intent of making failures a reality and allowing random chance to screw over "the best laid plans of mice and men." And spiders, apparently.

I also disagree that it is just about peace of mind. Being able to know that certain actions will succeed allows you to plan around that. For example, if I take the Stewardship that resolves a situation and make certain it succeeds, I don't need to worry about doing the Diplo or Intrigue actions which do the same and can spend our Diplo and Intrigue actions on other options. Furthermore, if a situation can be certain to be dealt with in the current turn, I can begin to take actions that progress other things or begin preparing to do stuff in future months.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It is rare indeed that a truly critical action can be turned into a sure thing with a +1 on the die roll. Most of the time, such actions are either already a sure success (our score exceeds the DC), or are not a sure success even with the +1 (the DC exceeds our score by two or more). That, or the action is not truly critical and our plans can succeed without it.

Furthermore, boons spent in this way will, as always, have a 90% chance of not changing the outcome. This is why I say that in this condition, we are buying peace of mind- the certainty that all will be well- not success.

Personally, I would be quite content to just accept the 90% chance that the action will succeed. This game is designed to allow failures to occur, and for that to be part of the gameplay experience. If I couldn't accept that I'd be playing a different game.

Strongly disagree. I am quite willingly to acknowledge that things I don't want have benefits and I disagree with the idea that any action is useless hence why I have not been the one using that word. A waste, sure, but every action has at least some benefit even if that benefit isn't always going to be meaningful or worthwhile.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is a distinction without a difference. "Useless, no, a waste, yes."

More generally, the really significant point here, philosophy of dice rolls aside, is that I would argue that repetitively lecturing people on how they are 'wasting resources' is a rather inappropriate thing to do in a collaborative gaming format.

You have been directly or indirectly insulting the intelligence of a nebulous group of people who may well have goals and ideas that you don't share, and maybe don't even understand. I would argue that it's counterproductive.

Retroactively berating people for being 'wrong' and 'wasting' a thing that doesn't do anything 90% of the time it's used anyway is counterproductive.
 
Huh. I'm looking at the results right now and I'm realizing that we actually need 1 more d100.

It involves the Spirit of Oskaria.
 
Simon_Jester said:
If you hate failing actions that much, you are probably playing the wrong game. Huh has explicitly balanced this game with the intent of making failures a reality and allowing random chance to screw over "the best laid plans of mice and men." And spiders, apparently.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I don't hate failing actions. I dislike taking reckless risks that can be avoided by taking more sensible actions.

Simon_Jester said:
It is rare indeed that a truly critical action can be turned into a sure thing with a +1 on the die roll. Most of the time, such actions are either already a sure success (our score exceeds the DC), or are not a sure success even with the +1 (the DC exceeds our score by two or more). That, or the action is not truly critical and our plans can succeed without it.

Furthermore, boons spent in this way will, as always, have a 90% chance of not changing the outcome. This is why I say that in this condition, we are buying peace of mind- the certainty that all will be well- not success.

Personally, I would be quite content to just accept the 90% chance that the action will succeed. This game is designed to allow failures to occur, and for that to be part of the gameplay experience. If I couldn't accept that I'd be playing a different game.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

And I disagree. Minor Boons are more than an mere 10% increase in success rate if used right and you need to look beyond a single action when putting together a plan with multiple moving parts. If you call ensuring a strategic success to be nothing more than buying peace of mind, then why bother using Minor Boons or Cooperative Actions at all? Again, it isn't about avoiding all failures despite your insistence, it is about trying to avoid certain failures and ensure the right success to allow for longer term planning than reacting to whatever major problem we are dealing with in the current month.

Simon_Jester said:
This is a distinction without a difference. "Useless, no, a waste, yes."

More generally, the really significant point here, philosophy of dice rolls aside, is that I would argue that repetitively lecturing people on how they are 'wasting resources' is a rather inappropriate thing to do in a collaborative gaming format.

You have been directly or indirectly insulting the intelligence of a nebulous group of people who may well have goals and ideas that you don't share, and maybe don't even understand. I would argue that it's counterproductive.

Retroactively berating people for being 'wrong' and 'wasting' a thing that doesn't do anything 90% of the time it's used anyway is counterproductive.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I say there is a difference. Treating useless and wasteful as interchange words ignores that something can still have some use whilst being a waste to make use of that something, especially when using that something comes at the cost of not using other more useful somethings. I also disagree that it is wrong to say that you think is a waste and if anything, it is inappropriate to not let your fellow players know that you consider something to be a bad idea as you would be refusing to help them.

I have no been insulting anyone nor berating them and neither it is retroactive as I have been holding and promoting this same stance since before the vote closed and the dice rolls were made. I consider doing a certain thing to be a bad idea and harmful to use as it wastes our resources by taking a reckless risk for uncertain gain over more easily achieved actions for reliable gains and I am letting them know this when people try to argue that is it a good idea. This is not an insult or berating to disagree with other people and if you are insulted to be told that something you think is a good idea is a bad idea in their eyes, grow thicker skin if you consider disagreement to be a personal attack. I will continue to argue against bad ideas that I consider to be harmful and it is not insulting nor unhelpful to do that.
 
I think it is more risk/reward. On one hand we can simply refuse to do and/or boost risky actions, but yet, it seems like the risky actions bring big payoffs if they work. On the other hand, going for the more likely ones have less impact. And besides, we are desperately trying to keep the country together while doing our jobs, and having someone else able to do likewise would make things a bit easier to handle.....
 
Themarineguy said:
I think it is more risk/reward. On one hand we can simply refuse to do and/or boost risky actions, but yet, it seems like the risky actions bring big payoffs if they work. On the other hand, going for the more likely ones have less impact. And besides, we are desperately trying to keep the country together while doing our jobs, and having someone else able to do likewise would make things a bit easier to handle.....
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I would agree with that except there doesn't seem to be any connection between the risk and reward of an action. Some actions have provided the same rewards in the past whilst having different degrees of difficulty whilst sometimes we get an action with more reward than risk whilst we also sometimes get an action that has more risk than reward. Unlike most CK2 quests, the actions themselves only show risk and cost and not rewards.
 
Oshha said:
Unlike most CK2 quests, the actions themselves only show risk and cost and not rewards.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
While certainly true, for the nation spirit actions, I think the main intent is to try and strengthen the spirit so it could make a difference. Of course it seems like it might have backfired, but I think many deemed the risk of failure was worth getting an ally to help keep the country from imploding on itself, hence why it was chosen in the first place.........
Though the disaster might be worse than expected considering the other rolls.....
 
Acuallity...
DreamerGhost said:
Roling
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This result was thrown out earlier because we thought we'd rolled too many. Perhaps we can use this one instead.

Edit: also in the future when using the auto-roller, try and fill in the Reason: with what you're rolling for. This will make it easier to keep track of what's been covered.
 
Last edited:
Dain24601 said:
Any particular reason? By all right Dreamers' roll should have been counted for the Oskaria action and only a miscount on our end caused it to be overlooked.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Firstly, (this is admitably selfish) I wanna see the results of these bad rolls.

Secondly, it just doesn't feel fair to me. The role you mention was made before the OP made the annoucement that he needed a ninth role. I am of the opinion that the OP needing a ninth role should not make a faulty role suddenly a correct role. Imagine if the opposite happened. Somebody rolls a faulty roll and rolls badly, then the OP says "Oh guys instead of eight I needed nine rolls, so I am just taking that awfull role of the guy who miscounted." Would you also support the system if that had happened?
 
BelligerentGnu said:
I mean, I would.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I am willing to believe you, but I personally would be quite pissed.

Firstly, the person rolling the extra dice was in the wrong. They miscounted, but mistakes happen and their dice has no effect, thus no harm, no foul. Then suddenly the OP says "Oops I miscounted and I will take that person's role." You suddenly have a failure in the plan that the player base can't do anything about. We can't prevent somebody rolling dice for fun or prevent them from miscounting. The OP would essentially be using a 'ghost' roll. The roll shouldn't have been made, shouldn't have counted and then suddenly does count.

Secondly, it's inheritently unfair as anybody who counted correctly and/or wasn't rolling for fun essentially didn't have a chance to make the roll.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top