[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Jasper:
How would you suggest making the other scales more viable relative to order?

I think Production is fine and Heat/Cold is fine (though morale effects would be nice). Growth is underpowered, and would be better (and more thematic) if it offered more growth, not more gold. Or maybe cheaper cavalry, since grass and horses flourish...=) No, seriously.

I see magic as weak, too. Drain is crippling, since it gives increasing detriments, while magic gives decreasing returns...

So, if you use magic-2 units as researchers, going from drain-3 to magic-3 is like this:

Scale.......Research......Design Points
-3..................1.......................+40
-2..................2.......................+40
-1..................3.......................+40
+0.................4.......................0
+1.................5.......................-40
+2.................6.......................-40
+3.................7.......................-40

...not very balanced. The move from -3 to -2 costs 40 points, but is WAY more valuable than the move from +2 to +3 which is almost worthless even with weak researchers. Now if Magic/Drain increased or decreased gem output from magic sites... yes. THAT would make it a vital scale. 10% per tick would work (and of course gem output would have to be randomized, so that a site giving 3 Earth gems, in Drain-3, would have three 70% chances of giving an earth gem each turn, averaging 2.1 gems per turn).

Alternately (or in addition), the cost could be rescaled, like this:

Scale.......Research......Design Points
-3..................1.......................+55
-2..................2.......................+50
-1..................3.......................+45
+0.................4.......................0
+1.................5.......................-45
+2.................6.......................-40
+3.................7.......................-35

Thus, the cost of Magic-3 would stay 120, but the benefit of Drain-3 would move to 150... and the previously less-tempting ends of the scale would both look more attractive.

As for making order less prone to extremes, rescaling the cost or reducing the event interference might help. +-1 Order causing -+5% event probability rather than +-10% might help, and partially decouple the luck/order link.

-Cherry