refuting common wisdom on scales everybody knows

[Xietor]

To see if anyone is really wants to try and make a rock hard argument, let me hear someone make a case for taking turmoil and misfortune!

[Sombre]

I did hear someone claiming turmoil was good because if you get invaded barbarians will attack the invader since he lacks luck scale, probably.

But the same is true of order misfortune - if you invade you lose the benefit of order and keep the nasty misfortune.

[Folket]

Turmoil/misfortune is the only scales I take. So superior to death/misfortune.

[llamabeast]

Sombre said:

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.

I think there's a bit of logical fallacy or something going on there. Being as most people play with a certain set of scales, the observation that most victories occur with that set of scales is indeed uninformative/misleading. By contrast, the fact that Baalz has won games with unusual scales does show that it is possible to do well with such scales, which is the point he was making.

[Radio_Star]

This is speculative on my part, but I'd imagine that you could leverage strong 'undesirable' scales diplomatically, forestalling an invasion by convincing a potential opponent to choose a more profitable target.

[CUnknown]

Baalz, I agree with you on most points. However, production/sloth is pretty clearly the weakest scale and the best bet to sell off for points, imo. It's the only scale that is pretty much obsolete towards the mid-late game. I mean, I take prod-3 as Ulm, but for most other races I'd probably take somewhere slothy, if not all the way to sloth-3.

It's not that prod is never useful, or that sloth will never hurt you, but in general there are better ways to spend your points than prod and no better ways to get points than sloth.

Edit: Oh, I also wanted to say that I agree with you 100% about Drain, it's a great scale to take for points, imo. Not only does it help to protect against Mind Hunts, but it only subtracts 1 research (in base game) and gives you 80 points! 1 research is really not a big deal, although it may make some cheap sacred researchers no longer worth it.

In CB mod, it's not quite as worth it.

[Twan]

llamabeast said:
By contrast, the fact that Baalz has won games with unusual scales does show that it is possible to do well with such scales, which is the point he was making.

It's possible to win with any scales. Am I supposed to have said the contrary ?

It's anyway more unlikely to win with some.

[Baalz]

CUnknown said:
Baalz, I agree with you on most points. However, production/sloth is pretty clearly the weakest scale and the best bet to sell off for points, imo. It's the only scale that is pretty much obsolete towards the mid-late game. I mean, I take prod-3 as Ulm, but for most other races I'd probably take somewhere slothy, if not all the way to sloth-3.

It's not that prod is never useful, or that sloth will never hurt you, but in general there are better ways to spend your points than prod and no better ways to get points than sloth.

This is exactly what I'm talking about, most everybody "always" takes order and "never" takes production despite the fact that this is suboptimal in several situations and a judgment call in several more. Obviously there are situations where order/sloth makes sense. There are other situations where production/turmoil will give you more gold in hand than taking order - I give an example with C'tis but you don't have too think too hard for more. More gold and a faster expansion. Yes, obviously the usefulness of production declines over time but that argument hardly stops most people from taking awake pretenders - those design points are completely wasted by the end of year one.

[MaxWilson]

JimMorrison said:
Take for example, if in a particular scenario, you were given perfect temp scale, and you were allowed +3 on ALL scales except for 1, that MUST be at -3. I can guarantee you 90% of the people who read these boards would put 3 Sloth with impunity.

I'd probably pick Misfortune. Prod does have its uses, and I don't care about heroes.

-Max

[Omnirizon]

how come everyone is stuck on (over)analysing order/turmoil and luck/misfortune?

what about heat/cold scales?

3 cold can fund 3 order with a net return in gold, and you have a great built in defense against C'tis and Hydras. The only reason I see never to take 3 cold is if I need to maximize gold income and can't afford to lose it on the cold scale, or if I'm playing a nation with cold-bloods I plan to use. You can also take 3 cold 3 order and 1 growth and have a small net gain on gold, but also get the long term gain of growth, and help alleviate the supply reduction of cold (if that is a problem, typically it is not). Lastly, consider that random fluctuations in the temp scale will often put your provinces at 2 or even 1 cold, helping to remove that gold penatly. However, you can never fluctuate above the cold 3 you already have. Thus there is an actual increase in return for taking cold 3 (ei. the points you get from taking it are worth more than the penalty, relative to when you take only cold 1 or 2, becuase the cold 3 cannot fluctuate any higher, whereas cold 1 and 2 will often fluctuate up to 3.)