refuting common wisdom on scales everybody knows

[Ironhawk]

Radio_Star said:
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.

An interesting idea, but it won't play out in a real game. All the other player has to do is wipe you out and then your dominion vanishes, to be quickly replaced by thier own. The only nations that have dominion which makes invasion a serious pain are the pop-killers / insanity ones.

[Sombre]

llamabeast said:
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.

But that doesn't support 'refuting common wisdom on scales'. It's obviously possible to win with any scales and if you have enough people you'll find some who have won/done well with total garbage scales. It's essentially just the mirror image of the 'everyone uses X therefore it must be the best' argument and hence it's just as silly.

[Zeldor]

The biggest problem is that there are some nations that can afford goods scales and other can't. Especially it is true about "free 150 points nation" which do not need awake pretender. Some nations are lucky to have great expansion early and great game later.

Other ones just need to do something to survive first 2 years. So they need to waste [yes, waste] 150 points to get awake pretender. And that is almost 4 scales and not cheap SC chassis. You have to make sacrifices. And even if you are resource heavy nation productivity is the least painful one. You use your SC to conquer provinces around capitol. You get good land - you get nice resources. If you get bad ones - well, you'd be doomed with prod3 too.

If all nations had viable early-game expansion options then awake SC pretender would be really a choice for those that want to get few more provinces in exchange for scales.

[Endoperez]

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

what about heat/cold scales?

On the other hand, all your troops and mages have +2 encumberance in Cold 3, while cold-resistant opponents (Jotun, Caelum, undead, LA Atlantis and perhaps few more) won't. It's only when you are at full Cold 3, of course, so not all the time.

[JimMorrison]

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.

But there is a difference here. If you ran a poll, and 90% of the experienced players ran Order3 in their MP games, and ran another poll to find that 80% of the winners had Order3, then it could be argued that NOT taking Order3 is twice as good as taking it, in a well arranged strategy.

Obviously, accurate polling on this subject can't be attained, because you reasonably have to cull out the really newbie players who are learning MP and simply will NOT ever win a real war against another human in that particular game - their scale choices are irrelevant because there are other factors determining their chance (or lack thereof) of success.

My argument though is that I think O3 is SO prevalent, that you might be surprised to find a disparity between the use of that scale in practice, and the use of other scales in success.

[CUnknown]

MaxWilson - you've got balls! Taking misfortune-3 over sloth-3? I would never take Misfortune-3 under any circumstances, ever. It is a horrible, horrible scale.. Maybe I lack testicular fortitude, but the prospect of straight up losing the game by turn 2 without any interference by an enemy player is too much for me to take.

Sloth, you can get around it, and you will pretty much forget about it by turn 30 or so. Maybe I am just cursed by fate, but Misfortune haunts me and causes the doom of my nation. Even if it doesn't, I hate just sitting and waiting for the hammer of the gods to fall on my head.

Misfortune-1 or even 2 can be offset by Order, but there's a whole set of extra "Events of Doom" reserved for the brave souls who attempt Misfortune-3.

Maybe that's just me. But I honestly think that Misfortune-3 is far worse than Turmoil-3. I'd much rather be able to plan around a crappy economy (but one that is consistently crappy) and be pleasantly surprised when I get that +500 gold windfall event, than have a great economy that I try to plan around, only to have it destroyed by numerous evil events.

Edit: I think some people greatly underestimate the effects of Misfortune, and blame their personal Misfortune as a player when they are struck by bad events in-game. The truth is, you -give yourself- these bad events by taking Misfortune! You have no one to blame but yourself.

[thejeff]

At least if you lose the game outright on turn 2, it's over and you can start another one.

If you're handicapped the entire game, it's a long slow slog to your lose.

[kasnavada]

Just to add some little facts instead of speaking about theoriminions...

As far as Order 3 goes, run the following test :
Common setting : start with 9 provinces, awake god.
Setting for test 1 : order 3.
Setting for test 2 : luck 3 turmoil 3.

Just wait for 30 turns without moving and see what you get... some people are going to be surprised.

[MaxWilson]

CUnknown,

I habitually take Misfortune-3 along with the other scales being pretty good. The only time I have ever had seriously game-killing events was during a brief period when I was experimenting with Death scales. Under Growth, Misfortune has never been a real problem even if I'm sometimes curious what heroes I'm missing out on.

I can certainly imagine that some people would prefer to take Sloth, but I wouldn't. I like Prod. Bear in mind that I play SP.

-Max

[Zeldor]

You were just lucky. Misfortune 3 kills people in MP games. Of course someone needs to come and take their lands, but that is just finishing what was done by misfortune scale [yes, it happened to me with MA R'lyeh and Order 3 Misf3 and I have seen other people getting killed that way]. The worst things are cumulated unrest events in capitol.