[Baalz]

Whew, sorry if this post is all over the place, but I wanted to responnd to points made by several different people.

@Saxon: Assuming for a second that order and production are mutually exclusive, production gives you more flexibility than order. Take my C'tis example, the high production guy not only has more gold but can easily switch to recruiting slave warriors if the situation merits it- or elite warriors more likely (yeah production!). True, he'll burn a larger percentage of available gold in that situation, but this is a flexibility that the order player doesn't have, the option to field heavy infantry even when his opponent starts massing longbows.

@QM & Micah: Yes, a good part of my argument is that order & production are usually mutually exclusive because of the way stuff works out. Certainly there are exceptions, but often you're choosing an awake pretender, strong bless or rainbow, which leaves you fairly limited design points. Magic, growth and temperature scales are largely dictated by your nation. This leaves a tug of war between order, production & luck. It's all fine and well to get order and production, but in practice this usually means you won't have an awake pretender or some other significant consideration. Sometimes production is better than order. Sometimes an awake pretender is better than order. Sometimes a high magic scale is better than order. My point is that though order is often the most efficient use of design points, there are also often other competitive choices to make.

Twan: The fact most everyone does it is a specious argument. I personally have won a couple games and done quite well in several more using "non-standard" scales. Several people in this thread have said similar things.

Drain is a bit more difficult to play, but I think it's viable in more situations than most people realize. You've got to look at the percentage hit to your research and how those design points otherwise effect you. If magic-1 to drain-2 only hits your research by 20% and it allows you to expand more than 20% faster, or perhaps get order-3 and production-3 thus boosting your income by more than 20% then it makes sense. Also, skull mentors & lightless lanterns can be reasonable ways to leverage a drain scale in some situations.

I disagree, I think luck is often much better than order in the early game. Obviously this is going to vary a bit, but between the extra gold, extra casltes, extra labs, etc. I often find luck will give you more gold value than order in the first year. Order pulls ahead in the long run, but it's hard to put a value on a big wad of extra gold in the first couple turns.