Productive Scale needs some Enhancements

[CUnknown]

Baalz, I trying not to disagree, honest!

But..but.. are you really saying that Productivity is worthy, is the same way that Order, or Magic, or even Luck are worthy?

I agree that early expansion is extremely important. Productivity can certainly help with that, but so can other things: an awake combat pretender, cheap bless troops, good archers like Longbowmen, low-resource effective troops like Ilithids or something like that, etc.

If I had no low-res cost units, no longbows or Marignon crossbows, no cheap bless troops, and I still felt the need for a good early expansion, I would invest my points in a good combat pretender -- and that's a gift that keeps on giving past turn 12. And of course rapid early expansion is not always even necessary.

There are other, better ways to get what Productivity gives you.

[Baalz]

Well, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I might argue that there are *other* ways to get what productivity gives you. I'm not saying productivity is "da bomb", just that it is a viable alternative in a lot of situations to going with an expansion pretender or taking order-3. If you're going with lower resource troops (certainly a viable strategy) you'll often need more of them to be effective so you're spending more gold and have more upkeep whittling away the benefit of order over productivity. Sometimes you don't have the option of recruiting elsewhere - cap only troops or good indies so your recruitment is permanently resource constrained. Sometimes you are both gold and resource restricted - ie you can afford 10 infantry but if you had more resources you'd get heavy infantry rather than medium. How much more effective is a LA Arco heavy elephant than 10 light infantry? It's not a linear progression, sometimes the sweet spot just requires a certain amount of resources.

Order-3 vs Prod-3, 15% more gold and lower randoms vs 50% more resources. Does the higher resources combine to boost your expansion, reduce your troop cost, and reduce your castling needs by 15%? Perhaps, as I said it's a situational decision. Perhaps I want to take luck scales. Perhaps I need an imprisoned pretender for other reasons. Perhaps I've got really crappy non-cap national mages and don't plan to put up many castles to recruit them. Do I always take productivity? Of course not, but I think the people claiming it's never a competitive choice are silly.

[calmon]

Thanks for all the responses!

Well different strategies always play a main role in building the pretender with his dominion. I agree that with some stragies and special nations productivity 3 makes sence.

However for most nations this bonus is to small for the invest in my eyes. Maybe a small/medium buff can help this scale being more used in a positive way.