Productive Scale needs some Enhancements

[Tharsonius]

Sir_Dr_D said:
But magic and growth are concidered secondary to order. After someone has taken order, and they have points left they may take magic or growth. But how many people would take growth or magic, but have not put anything on the order scale.

Looks like I'm one of the few people who did it - in 2 of my MP games running

Still learning the game...

[WonderLlama]

Sir_Dr_D said:
But magic and growth are concidered secondary to order. After someone has taken order, and they have points left they may take magic or growth. But how many people would take growth or magic, but have not put anything on the order scale.

I would also do this, with magic. Getting the right magic scale for my researchers is my single top priority. Of course, that's going to be very different depending on the research score of my preffered national research mage. I won't always want magic at all. But then again, I haven't yet played a serious strategy in which I couldn't afford my preffered magic scale and order. And I'm also a newbie.

[llamabeast]

I also often would put Magic-3 ahead of Order-3 for certain races. Don't think I would ever put Growth ahead of order though.

I'm not sure these things are half so cut-and-dried as people are making out. Maybe I just play sub-optimally. I tend to do fairly well though.

[Baalz]

Yeah, all the scales obviously are strat/nation dependent, but I think the people who "never" take a certain scale is more a testament to the player's temperament and playstyle than anything else.

Luck/Order loses some synergy but can be a reasonable choice in certain situations - say Arcoscephale. You've already got a pretty good magic diversity and great initial expansion, your ROI for investing in a pretender is lower. Though of course others would play it differently I think you have a hard time making the case that Luck/Order is not a competitive strategy.

Similarly, productivity can situationally be very useful. I know everybody is typically down on MA Ulm but leaving that argument aside for a second I can't imagine trying to play them with a sloth scale. Another example would be a Sauromatia strategy with an early/mid game built around the cap-only poison archers which I've personally employed to good effect. Even after you've captured every border to your cap you're still recruiting the max every turn and putting each unit to good use. You've got some great resource intensive heavy cavalry at the rest of your castles. Again, there are obviously other ways to play it but this is a competitive strategy compared to an expansion pretender particularly when you remember the income boost that is bundled with productivity.

Magic/growth vs order, again, situation. If I'm taking a race who's prospects are tied to MR rolls (like, say, R'yleh) I generally consider the magic scale to be more important than order. If I'm gonna have a lot of expensive old mages I usually prioritize growth over order once you consider the opportunity cost of mage replacement and long term population growth.

[CUnknown]

I agree, Baalz. No one is trying to argue that Productivity is never useful.. it's just that it is less so, more often, than the other scales except maybe growth. Especially in the late game where productivity is basically worthless, even for MA Ulm.

Take this example. Order is generally accepted to be the best scale by most people. I'd go so far as to say that any strategy which uses Turmoil is suspect as far as being competitive. I mean, you can't just take Turmoil off the cuff without a specialized strategy (such as Turmoil/Luck, and/or Pangea's menaeds) and expect to compete. The points you get from Turmoil simply aren't worth being spent anywhere else than on buying back your Order again.

Think about Productivity/Sloth again. Imagine if someone said, "Any strategy using Sloth is suspect as far as viability!"

That is just so funny it makes me giggle. Like for 60-70% or more of strategies, you can take Sloth and just spend those points elsewhere and be probably even more competitive.

I'd say Magic is somewhere in the middle. You can take Drain, you can take Magic, it sort of doesn't matter -- I mean it depends on your strategy and your race.

So, it seems clear that Productivity could use a boost. Back to the Ulm situation, if we boost Productivity, Ulm gets boosted as well, cause they always take Prod-3. So, it's a win-win.

[VedalkenBear]

Actually, I'd have to say that even when I play Ulm, I don't generally take Production-3. I certainly don't take Sloth, but I find that I don't need to take Production at all and still do fine.

That should say something about how subpar the Production scale is.

[DrPraetorious]

All of the level-3 negative scales are a *major* drawback.

For most strategies, Sloth-3 is the least major. There are obviously a few situations (Pangaea) where it isn't much of a drawback at all, but that's got to be figured into the game. It's still a huge penalty, though, as EA Ermor, for example, I generally do take Sloth-3, but it's not like I'm happy to get -50% principes out of my forts. If you made sloth-3 any *bigger* penalty it would be completely impossible to play as a sloth-3 nation unless you had an awake SC pretender to expand, and *that* is not desirable either, so I don't think Sloth-3 needs to be made any worse. It's just understood that, for many nations, Sloth-3 is the least-crippling of the major drawbacks you can take.

OTOH, Productivity-3 is taken quite seldom. I take it as LA Ulm, LA or MA Jotunheim, and LA Pangaea, and I take it near-last among the positive scales that I do take.

So Productivity-3 should be better. I think reduced fort construction time and building costs would be an ideal benefit - the fact that a construction time penalty for Sloth wouldn't really come up much doesn't bother me, b/c I actually want to reward Productivity rather than punish Sloth.

[Sir_Dr_D]

I like Micah's suggestion earlier. Since the devs aren't likely to chnage the production scale the only way we can mod it is to make the production scale change the income by 4%.

[vfb]

CUnknown said:
Take this example. Order is generally accepted to be the best scale by most people. I'd go so far as to say that any strategy which uses Turmoil is suspect as far as being competitive. I mean, you can't just take Turmoil off the cuff without a specialized strategy (such as Turmoil/Luck, and/or Pangea's menaeds) and expect to compete.

What strategies would you choose Turmoil for? I'd be really likely to go Turmoil3 & Luck3 in MP with EA or LA Mictlan, or LA Ermor. I'll go Turmoil3 & Luck3 in SP with almost any nation, just for the fun events.

The points you get from Turmoil simply aren't worth being spent anywhere else than on buying back your Order again.

Points you get from Turmoil can be worth it to get a nice double bless when your sacreds are dirt cheap.

[HotNifeThruButr]

As far as I can tell, the problem is that

A. Gold/research is always a suitable substitute for resources. The effect is about the same if you, for example, took a handful of resource-heavy Hastati out of your army and put in a gold-heavy Hydra or took a handful of armored soldiers out for a mage that can hurl fireballs/summon monsters.

B. Gold/research has uses beyond the function of resources, which it can already substitute for. You can build fortresses with gold and researched summons are powerful enough to make all troops look like chaff.

From a theoretical point of the view, the only way to fix the scale problem, then, would be to make it so resources has a unique function. This can be done with modding, by manipulating the spell book and the units that may be recruited.

If summoned monsters were less powerful, the "early game" would be effectively extended, since troops would be useful for longer, though this wouldn't make it go on forever, since summons, as a rule, get more powerful while troops do not. The same goes for modding troops to be more powerful.

But those are inelegant solutions that do not solve the problem, only applies shoddy bandaids to it. I would prefer it if Resources were given a whole different function to fulfill that is unique to it and can't be subsituted by gold or research.

What if Resources were directly used to build fortifications instead of or along with money? Perhaps you pay your cash for a castle, but to physically construct it and presumably to arm it with your national weapons, you need resources taken from the province?

Perhaps labs and temples cost resources along with gold?

Perhaps there is some sort of building, maybe an Arsenal that only consumes resources? Perhaps it had a useful and desirable function?