refuting common wisdom on scales everybody knows

[Endoperez]

They tried, at least. I'm not sure if they succeeded, because there's a need for a thread like this.


Baalz - I like your line of thinking, but I'm not experienced enough to argue against quantum and other players with MP experience.

[quantum_mechani]

JimMorrison said:


Fortunately, our wonderfully thoughtful and intelligent game devs saw fit to not make any one scale stand out sufficiently to make it absolutely necessary to a viable game strat - and that is why most of us are here now.

I've never said you can't play a perfectly successful game with even the most unlikely and unsynergetic pretender design, but, just as if the scale were 15% a tick, there are good choices and worse ones. In any case, I don't think of imbalance as a disease that strikes certain games, more like a spectrum that every game lies somewhere along. Perfect balance is as unattainable as a perfect geometric figure, but it can almost always be improved on. In fact, in a game as complex as dominions, it would be rather shocking if some options didn't turn out much better than others, no matter how careful the developers.

[Saxon]

The challenge is that gold is so versatile. It does so many things in the game and is so flexible that it becomes more valuable than anything else. Resources, research, luck are all quite focused and lack this flexibility. As such, maximizing gold means maximizing your flexibility across the board. Linked to this, minimizing something, like production, does not limit your flexibility to the same degree minimizing the broadly impacting gold does.

If I am understanding Baltz�s point well, he is pointing out that good planning in some situations will allow you to maximize your cash flow in ways other than just maxing out order. He provides the C�tis example, which is clear, but it does lock one into a certain path. However, if circumstances change, due to the stage of the game or an unexpected enemy action, that recruiting pattern might need to change. Order would offer a more flexible way of getting gold, which is independent of recruiting patterns. In addition, that same recruiting pattern, with order 3, would generate even more universally useful gold. (Yes, this does ignore where the points came from, but the idea remains)

Some nations in certain eras and other nations with well thought out plans can get by without order. However, for the majority of nations, the broad usefulness and flexibility of gold makes order a very attractive option.

Given the game design, gold is going to remain critical. If the design was changed to bring in multiple resources and limited specific actions to certain resources, gold would become one of several resources that you have to balance. However, with the structure we have, the simple universal usefulness of gold is always going to make order a dominant choice.

[JimMorrison]

quantum_mechani said:

I've never said you can't play a perfectly successful game with even the most unlikely and unsynergetic pretender design, but, just as if the scale were 15% a tick, there are good choices and worse ones. In any case, I don't think of imbalance as a disease that strikes certain games, more like a spectrum that every game lies somewhere along. Perfect balance is as unattainable as a perfect geometric figure, but it can almost always be improved on. In fact, in a game as complex as dominions, it would be rather shocking if some options didn't turn out much better than others, no matter how careful the developers.

But it's not "much better", that's the argument here. Yes, some nations are absolutely gold dependent, but most are not to a great extreme. You can't use 15% gold on Order scales as an argument, because that's not the way the game works. Obviously, gold is easier for most people to use to full effect, and has the bonus of accruing even when you do not use it, where the other scales are somewhat more conditional, and require more active exploitation as part of the strategy.

Even more valid than an argument of whether skewing the balance would change the relative value of the scale, is the argument that sometimes you will start in very lean territory. The age-old argument between Order and Luck always seems to necessarily assume a certain abundance of wealth. If that base value were reduced significantly, such as starting in a position where all of your easy expansion is into mountains and wastes, then the Luck scale becomes proportionately more relevant, and Order becomes somewhat marginalized.

The difference between the two arguments, is that sometimes you DO start surrounded by mountains and wastes, but yet no matter how many pretenders I create, I never get 15% income per tick of Order.

[quantum_mechani]

JimMorrison said:

But it's not "much better", that's the argument here. Yes, some nations are absolutely gold dependent, but most are not to a great extreme. You can't use 15% gold on Order scales as an argument, because that's not the way the game works. Obviously, gold is easier for most people to use to full effect, and has the bonus of accruing even when you do not use it, where the other scales are somewhat more conditional, and require more active exploitation as part of the strategy.

Even more valid than an argument of whether skewing the balance would change the relative value of the scale, is the argument that sometimes you will start in very lean territory. The age-old argument between Order and Luck always seems to necessarily assume a certain abundance of wealth. If that base value were reduced significantly, such as starting in a position where all of your easy expansion is into mountains and wastes, then the Luck scale becomes proportionately more relevant, and Order becomes somewhat marginalized.

The difference between the two arguments, is that sometimes you DO start surrounded by mountains and wastes, but yet no matter how many pretenders I create, I never get 15% income per tick of Order.

I think you misunderstand- it would be silly to argue order is needed because it's 15% per tick, when it obviously is not. The entire 15% thing was just to put aside the 'everything is balanced, by default' line of argument. Not that I'm saying you were arguing that, but I have seen it implied a lot in these kind of discussions in the past.

Anyway, while it is true taking order does not take much strategic finesse (as opposed to other ways you could use points), the key thing is that it the gold fuels most of the more advanced options that do take careful strategic deployment. And I find when starting in gold poor territory, the extra gold from the capital that order provides becomes all the more crucial. Perhaps luck could provide more, but it takes quite a few luck events early to keep up the momentum with turmoil as order. But you are right that is an age-old discussion that has been beaten to death.

[Endoperez]

If I want to start building a fort before turn 5 as MA Ulm, I can't take Turmoil. With Turmoil, I pretty much have to wait until I get a gold event, while with neutral Order I can sometimes start as soon as I conquer a province I want to fortify. Unless I take Order or start in an exceptionally rich area, I won't have much money left over after fully recruiting from two castles.

[Folket]

I have started to like Production. I used it in 10 player/very large and in Bartered souls. I did very well in both games but production did not save me money it allowed me to burn more money on troops to get a good start. Later it allowed me to produce units where I wanted them. There are other games I would have wanted to have production instead of sloth as well. Not all but production is not a weak scale in my world.

Order is a terrible strong scale. People seem to think that you can't take luck if you take order but as far as I have seen luck works better if you have order as well. you could argue that order is less important then something else at times but in general if you have to sack order either it is a very small game or your strategy is flawed.

[Twan]

I think you may always try to refute common wisdom with theory, but as long it isn't refuted by results of dozen of MP games it just isn't refuted.

I think the base of said common wisdom is games don't finish in turn 20. And if they take good scales people want something still usefull by turn 50 or 80.

Order is good in early and late game, production is not. Growth is as good for income as production in early game, 10 times better in late.

There may be an exception for the few nations having recruitables using magical weapons and with sufficient hp and mr to survive against late game magic (I don't see a lot... LE Atlantis perhaps ?) so heavy national troops can remain usefull, but it's extremely niche.

Drain is bad from early to late game for the 90% not drain immune nations, sloth is only really bad for early expansion with a limited number of ressource intensive nations and if they don't take an awake god. Magic lose power in endgame once research is maxed, but maxing interesting schools / reaching uniques first is such a big advantage a nation who used drain will probably be still weaker than a magic nation 20 or 30 turns after all finished researchs.

But magic has some side effects that may make it more or less interesting, and may even justify in rare cases to take drain (out of researchers quality, some other things may be considered : do your nation usually use many mages and fight long battles (= profits a lot from fatigue reduction) or has the kind of troops making battles short / has better ways to destroy ennemies than mages spaming spells ? do your mages use MR spells ? do your nation use thugs or undeads whose main weakness is against MR spell ?).

Luck is not as good as order in early game (when your empire is small) and not as good as order in late game on big maps (if your empire is big and expanding, you run into the artificial limit on number of events, and the bad ones in recently conquered provinces often replace the good from your luck 3 lands). Luck is anyway better than order for some situations in midgame (if you have about 20 provinces, *all in your dominion and maxed in scales*, so you reliably get 2-3 good events a turn, luck clearly beats order) and is never a bad choice as it's the only gems scale.

[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.

[Sombre]

Baalz said:
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.

Therefore 'I have done well with it and so have a few other people' is an equally specious argument, if not worse. After all for every player that has won or done well using nonstandard scales, there will be more who have won or done well using standard scales. You can't have it both ways.