refuting common wisdom on scales everybody knows
 

I thought I’d take a moment to refute some of the conventional wisdom that everybody knows. Let me preface this by making it clear that I’m in no way saying that the conventional wisdom is always wrong, just that it’s not always right.

Gold is king. You’re foolish if you don’t take order-3 with almost any nation, and turmoil is practically unplayable competitively. This is not true. Gold is a means, not an end. It is often the case that making other choices will allow you to spend less gold on expanding at the same rate. Production allows you to use more heavily armored troops, so you can use less of them. Taking an awake pretender allows you to use less troops for expansion. Taking a better bless allows you to split your sacreds into smaller armies for more rapid expansion. All of these can very well end you with a stronger position than if you took in more gold but also spent more gold. Order/turmoil scale is a balancing act which must be planned for in the context of your nation and your strategy for optimal return.

Expansion is queen to gold’s king. In order to have a competitive build you must be able to expand very rapidly. If you can’t grab about 20 provinces by the end of the first year you need to go back to the drawing board. False. Provinces are a means, not an end. Namely, provinces are a way to get more gold and gems. Of course, all other things being equal the more provinces you can get the better, but you must consider the opportunity cost. The first obvious one is that scales are often sacrificed to optimize expansion. A swing from order-3, prod-3, growth -3 (+ 39% income) to turmoil-3, sloth-3, death -3 (-39% income) means you have to expand more than twice as fast merely to break even. This is an extreme example to illustrate the point, but the concept holds on any smaller variation – every tick down in your scales is more you have to work just to break even for gold. In addition, extra provinces have a downside - you’ve got more area to defend, more money dumped into PD, more upkeep in troops to defend it, and of course more troops and casualties to conquer it in the first place.

This is another consideration that most people don’t consider, the opportunity cost of dumping gold into troops as fast as you can to fuel a fast expansion. If you stop and think about it, it is often a stronger position to have 12 provinces with 3 castles than 24 provinces with just your capital castle at the end of year one. With extra labs, mages & research, triple the troop production (even without accounting for production scale differences) and superior defensive options you stand a very good chance of clobbering the guy who’s grabbing provinces as fast as he can (and probably making enemies along the way). At some point, obviously, it’s a good idea to devote resources to things other than expansion. This point can be quite a bit earlier than many people realize.

Sloth is almost always great dumping grounds to get design points. False. As I illustrate above production can often lead to more economic power than order whether from more efficient use of your troops or faster expansion. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that triple the troops (-45% to +45% resources) can often translate into double the gold income which trounces the 30% swing in income from order-3/sloth-3 to turmoil-3/production-3. Again, the same is true in smaller increments.

Misfortune is almost always a good dumping grounds to get design points. False. Luck offers a number of advantages which many overlook in paying homage to the “gold is King” myth. True, order will give you more gold over time than luck even accounting for rebuilding burned down labs & temples (though of course your missing lab also cost you research points and possibly strategic spell casting). I believe that it’s a mistake to measure the benefit of luck in terms of gold. One big advantage of luck is greater magic diversity through random gems, indie mages joining you, and national heroes. How do you put a gold value on getting a mage plus gems to start site searching in a new path? Also, the fact that order will give you more gold in the long run does not capture the advantage of gaining 1000 gold in the first couple turns when every coin counts the most. Finally, I think the detriment of random indie attacks are not really factored in by most people. If you’re on the ball and have some spare capacity they are no more than a gold-costing nuisance. In a tight fight though they are often the tipping point, effectively acting with your enemy to attack you and fortify what you lost. Misfortune scales are very common, and I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen people screwed over by indie attacks while another player is attacking them and they have no way to retake the lost provinces in any reasonable amount of time.

Drain is for suckers, never take it competitively. Well heck, just look at the numbers, what percentage change in research will the mage you plan to do most of your researching with have? If you plan on researching with Sauromancers (10 rp), drain 2 only subtracts 10% of your research…so you could put those design points into 2 levels of order to gain 14% more income and theoretically 14% more mages. Again, it all depends on how everything fits together.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody knows
 

Awesome post Baalz.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody knows
 

My favorite way of looking at both order and blesses is that they are modifiers to the cost of troops. A 25% gold bonus is approximately the same as making troops 20% cheaper, and a bless is like modifying the base stats of a unit. In other words, sacrificing Order-3 to afford an F4 bless for Agartha is like buying Ancient Ones that cost 21% more but have Attack 11 instead of 9. (In this case it also makes it clear that most of Agartha's sacred troops are still tactically terrible for the price--they're like Jotunheim's normal troops but cold-blooded.) It doesn't quite work that way in practice because Order-3 doesn't give you a 21% boost throughout your whole empire, and you won't always be blessed perfectly (and you have to spend on priests to do the blessing), but it's a useful model.

I think the key reason why I prefer gold to resources is upkeep. My playstyle rarely maxes out resource usage at all my castles except in the early game, so Prod feels like an early-game optimization for me when I'm all about having a strategy for the late-game. (Even though, oddly enough, I rarely play out the late game and endgame because I'm winning by that point.)

<font color="red">Edit:</font> good point, Aezeal, gold buys more castles. So in a sense, Order buys Prod.

-Max

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody knows
 

I agree on it all, but in the end gold is usually needed and a limiting factor when building castles and high end mages (or just lots of mages). Late game you'll want cash to buy mages.. and more cash = more mages and also you'll be able to pay more upkeep while still having some cash to spare.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody knows
 

GOLD IS KING

All who betray this truth follow a false pretender god!

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody knows
 

Baalz,

The one thing that troubles me about your post is that your refutations all have the sound of knocking down straw men. "Never take drain, always take Order-3, always take Sloth-3." I think the conventional wisdom is that most things do have niches, and to the extent that Production, Drain, etc. are looked down on it is because the niche is small.

To take a specific example: Ashdod is my current flavor of the month, and the first thing I said when I looked at it was, "Whoa, if anybody ever needed a Prod scale, Ashdod does. 88-resource sacreds??? 50-resource Archers?" In actual practice Prod did not seem to be worth its points. In the early game, expansion works fine with sacreds even if you're using Sloth (+ human slingers if desired). Later on, I find supply problems much more of a problem than resource constraints, even if I'm playing with Sloth. Low Prod simply means that I have to plan my wars a few more turns in advance (building for 4 turns instead of 2) and/or use slightly cheaper troops, but once a campaign is in progress it's mostly limited by other factors. You could give me Prod-infinity and I still probably wouldn't pay 240 points for it, given how tight my point budgets tend to be. It would speed up early game expansion by a factor of 1.5 or 2 at most, and it would make it easier to pump gold onto the front lines in the form of troops in the midgame. (Well, I guess Prod-infinity would also give me +infinity to gold, and I'd pay points for THAT.)

So far I haven't played a nation that could really benefit from Prod scales, although there are a couple that should probably stick with Prod-0. (Ashdod may be one of these.)

-Max

P.S. I don't look down on Drain though, actually. I think 80 points for Drain-2 is potentially quite a good deal for certain nations/builds.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

Ah yes, in some situations order can indeed buy production, but in others production 'buys' gold. Sometimes your capital only troops are much better than what you can get at other castles, so you use less of them, so you spend less gold and have less upkeep. Sometimes (as I mentioned before) you can get heavy infantry instead of medium saving gold and upkeep. Sometimes your initial expansion (before you can get up additional castles) is much faster, gaining you more income than order would have gotten you.

You're missing my point in pointing out that you can buy production by spending gold...everybody knows gold can buy production which is why gold is king. My point is to remember that production can also 'buy' gold and sometimes that is the more efficient way to go.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

I have been a big fan of luck to make money over order. Order takes a while to get rolling – it also depends on what types of provinces you are in. Surrounded by wasteland or mountains – enjoy that +20% on a 12 income province (assuming your dominion has even gotten ramped up). I know people will point to tests and algorithms that show order is better. But as a finance guy, I am all about the time value of money and hitting a lucky trade fair that adds +1000 gold early on, or gets you a free hero/mage (think +8 RP in the first turn over 60 turns is ~ 500RP) is well worth it. Not too mention the gems, which are invaluable in the late game and often the only way to get a diverse gem income ramped up.

As for Drain, I have not had any luck taking Drain scales yet, but am hoping to find a way to make them work.

Not a big Production fan either, probably due to my innate love of Sloth.

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I feel like the balance in a lot of games is heavily swayed by a single pivotal event, like finding Mount Chaining, or getting a great indy mage that diversifies you into 1 or more new paths. Getting a national hero like Baba Yaga or Angrboda on the 2nd turn is just so amazing, which is why I like luck.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

Many of your points are valid- lots of gold without a good outlet doesn't do much good, taking sloth is not the best option for some nations, drain is useful mine when you need points - but I absolutely cannot agree that order 3 is not optimal in all but the most unusual of situations. While it's true it is possible to find yourself in a situation without a good gold outlet, that is very rare. Almost all nations can channel gold to immediate and significant effect- either buying the better mages that can boost research and provide an ace in the hole in battle magic, or simply worthwhile troops (this applies even for nations that benefit from prod- they benefit even more if they can afford more heavy troops). And as other have pointed out, even when supposing you have sufficient gold for your mages and troops of choice, building forts with gold is an almost universally worthwhile application.

This is not to say you cannot be quite successful with turmoil 3, with any nation. Obviously the gold available to each nation can vary a great deal, regardless of scales, but that in no way implies that stacking the deck against yourself is a good idea. The bottom line as I see it is that order is such an all purposely useful scale, that realistically there are very few things you could sacrifice those points for a better return.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

Great post. But then Im known for doubting the things everybody knows. One of the things I love about this game is that even in years of debate, no absolute winning strategy has been agreed on. I love to concentrate on the lost scales, the never used units, the worthless spells, and discover some tactic that makes them useful again

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

I would be quite surprised if this was the case for any game of significant complexity.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

I'll go ahead and let QM refute this point. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif At any rate, I've no problem if nobody disagrees with me, I'm refuting sentiments that I feel are common. I'm not referring to the really odd scenarios like LA Ermor (order) or MA Ulm (drain), but the fact that it seems to me plenty of people take the scales I mention 95% of the time.


Yes, in a vacuum more order is always good, no argument. My point is not that you ever have 'enough' gold, and I certainly never meant to imply that not having a good outlet for gold was common. My point was rather that there is a opportunity cost to everything and 'automatically' taking order-3 in every build you do is not always the most optimal choice. This is amplified by the 'expand at any cost' mentality where you burn gold to get as many (perhaps more lightly armored than optimal) troops out as fast as you can. Don't get me wrong, that's an obviously valid strategy. My assertion is it's not always the only competitive one.

To reiterate, my point is that you can, in lots of situations end up with more gold in hand by taking ie. production scales rather than order. You can, in some situations have more gold in hand by taking a higher bless rather than order, or an awake pretender.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

Well written and insightful as usual Baalz.

I've got a couple games going with Turmoil 1, Growth 2 and Luck 3 atm, and i'm liking it. Virtually no bad events in one, a single burnt lab in the other, decent cash, plenty of heroes and volunteers and the occasional big cash prize. It's both fun and viable and will use it again.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

Ironically, the key advantage of a prod scale, bless or awake pretender is... expanding faster. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Your own argument about reckless expansion seems to work against you here, taking order is the safe way to keep parity with fast expanding nations without spreading yourself too thin. And that is beside the fact, there are almost always something less important to dredge points from than order, given the large degree of diminishing returns where pouring more points into bless/pretender does not speed expanding.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

In alpaca I had 3 order and 3 luck, with 2 drain. With ma Pangaea no less. So yes unusual scales, with a plan, can prevail over traditional thinking.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

If you're taking turmoil, you're taking equal or greater parts luck. Nations that have cheap mages/nationals or that can take advantage of gem diversity makes it an appealing choice.

But to free up points for a bless or something and not take luck, I think you'd doom yourself to death by random events.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

I'm not sure we disagree here - turmoil without luck is a bad move. But my argument is that turmoil, even with luck, is still a suboptimal choice.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

Interesting thought experiment Baalz, but the problem comes from QM's basic assertion that order scales are pretty much always worth taking. If you take this as a base assumption then a lot of your following analysis doesn't hold up.

For example, taking drain, even with 10RP mages, means you lose 10% research, as opposed to gaining 10% with magic 1 (your analysis also didn't include taking the obvious magic-1 pick, which is a bit disingenuous) So, a 20% swing in RP for 3 scales. If order isn't assumed to be maxed out then sure, you could get 21% more gold...seems even, aside from having to build a ton more forts and labs to pump out mages, but since you can't have order-6 you end up being forced to take growth or production instead. 6% more gold doesn't look nearly so hot all of a sudden. Nations with weaker researchers obviously have an even easier call to make there.

Similarly O-3 blunts the effects of luck and misfortune, so taking some misfortune seems to be a good choice. That being said, you'll then want to avoid death, since that's when the really nasty events come in.

Yes, I realize this is kind of a ridiculous chain of effects, but it's actually how things work out, for the most part, and why the common wisdom is the way it is.

This leaves temp scales and production...sacrificing production to have an awake SC is pretty much always a good idea in terms of efficiency, and temperature scales aren't as important as they seem due to seasonal fluctuations, so I usually plunder them for points as well. The other problem with relying on production scales is that you could get a start with crappy neighbors...3 provinces, 2 plains and a woods isn't uncommon. Pulling in under 200 resources to your cap with high production is a pretty big hit. Perhaps a minor concern, but still, it's there.

Anyhow, I will admit everything is situational, but there's a chain reaction from the order scale being so good, which is why a lot of the other scale choices get set how they are so often.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

One common case where Luck is a better choice than order is in provinces that you are blood hunting. If you are playing one of the Mictlans, and you have blood hunters on every province from 2000 to 10000 pop, then Order is almost useless. And in general, as the game wears on and more and more disasters, pillagers, and spells hit your provinces, the value of Order becomes less and less. Plus, Luck makes the various Cross Breeding spells potentially worthwhile.

I would also point out the player morale benefit of Luck. When your neighbors are declaring war on you left and right, it is good for your spirits when a random gift of 1000 lbs of gold arrives at your capital.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

Order 3 does not block the effects of luck indefinitely.

It depends on how much you need the luck in the early game. In time, even with 3 order, you get 3 lucky events a turn.
The better your expansion, the sooner you hit the max lucky events even with order 3.

Order 3 does block the luck effects in the early game, but luck3 does double the chance of a worthy hero every turn starting on turn 1, and if you happen to be playing with worthy heroes that can be worth something.

In alpaca that was the only mod used, and i Luckily got the harpy queen and access to air magic on turn 3 or 4. And likely in year 2 i was getting a steady diet of diverse gems
that Pangaea normally does not get. Before my 1st war was over, I had 3 of the worthy heroes.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

Well, let me lay out an example to illustrate my point. I'll stick with C'tis since I started with Sauromancers...

MA C'tis is a nation many people would immediately take order/sloth with as they've got several good low resource troops. Expanding with groups something like 15 city guards and 30 slave warriors at a cost of 510 gold + 190 resources. Compare to production/turmoil expanding with something like 20 swamp guards (17 protection + falchion) for 260 gold + 420 resources. The swamp guards are going to take significantly less attrition against most indies as well. Who has better cash flow?

I think maybe the sticking point here is that you guys are arguing: "ok, so production can be a good idea, but you'd be much better in these situations going with production AND order!". Ok, again, I've got to say there's the opportunity cost, what are you giving up? Sure, it's best to take order, production, an awake pretender, a positive magic scale and the kitchen sink as well. Do you take the extra gold from order at the expense of losing some magic diversity? At the cost of slowing down your initial expansion and putting yourself more at risk of a rush? At the cost of slowing down your research? Suck the points our of luck, of course - though I think I've made a point that that's not a no-brainer. There is a cost, and IMO its not always better to take order.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

A very thought provoking topic Baalz. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I wish there were more games of significant complexity, but I can think of very few compared to the number of 'tank rush' style rts's that have been on the market over the years. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

I was saying that taking turmoil only frees up points for luck.

However, I don't think it's a suboptimal choice if you can use diverse gems effectively or you just don't need a lot of gold. For example, in EA Ulm's most expensive mage is 220 gold and that's cap only and they've got no cavalry or otherwise expensive units. Arco, Oceania, Lanka, and R'lyeh are in the same boat to a lesser degree, barring a few expensive cap only units or whatever.

Then, you've got Caelum that has mammoths and Seraphs to pay for, Sauromatia which is almost all cav, hydras, and expensive mages, Agartha has very few cheap units, and Hinnom is just ridiculously gold dependant for any of it's units.

Then some are in between.

Some nations just don't need gold as badly as others, so you have some wiggle room in the scales.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

That is indeed the sticking point - I have never argued that there are not uses for prod. As I said before, there is a degree of diminishing returns as you spend point on expanding faster, just based on logistics (not to mention being spread thin). What this means, is that you generally do not need to mine order while more or less optimizing your expansion. And unlike factors like expanding pretender + bless, order does not add but multiply your gold advantage.

There is no denying by putting points in order you are not putting points elsewhere, and many of these other spending options are by their nature difficult to quantify in value. Given that, I can only say that in order's indispensability is based on it's universal applicability. Magic scale, blesses, prod scale, etc are not generally critical components all at the same time. And even if they were, you don't have enough gold to make the best use of them... unless perhaps you have order.

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In general, I find people tend to overstate the difficulty of getting magic diversity- it takes some significant bad luck (of the none scale sort) and magic restricted nation to lock you in for the most part. This is especially true in most MP games where trading is an option.

It's certainly true some nations demand gold even more than others- but that doesn't mean that it's not extremely valuable for any nation.

Ballbarian: I've seen some very imbalanced games, but almost by nature that usually means that more than one option was left super-powered. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

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One point missed so far in favour of Production scales is that by targetting high resource troops you are also lowering your upkeep. A strategy focused on low gold/high resource troops (as long as your nation has the appropriate units) will result in a substantially lower upkeep cost per turn.

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And to simplify the equation, take a quick look at O3/S3.

You are gaining 115% of the normal gold, and receiving 55% of normal resources.

Shifting 1 scale to O2/S2, puts you at 110% of normal gold, and 70% of normal resources. You just traded 4.35% of your net gold income, for a 27.2% increase in resources. Yes, you may argue that you would always steal those points from somewhere else if you don't want Sloth 3 in a particular game. My argument is, if EVERYTHING else balanced out exactly how you wanted it to, with most nations you would still be better off making that choice, as very few nations actually prosper militarily under S3, unless you have an awake PoD, and even then you may expand fine at first, but you are always going to be handicapped in that way.

Really, it comes down to strategy, and any strategy must be well thought out to be successful. Saying that O3 is 100% necessary, is akin to saying that S9 on your pretender is "absolutely necessary". There is no such thing, there are just some strategic elements that are easier to use, and some that are more versatile, there are NONE that are universally irreplaceable.

&lt;3

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

I agree with this, in principle (and there are even rare situations I'd advocate turmoil... mainly LA Ermor). However, keep in mind that you offer your own universal statement- would you say the same if order were, say, 15% per tick?

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

The only universality that I offer is that there is no universality. But just as I might say nothing is forever, you could reasonably argue that everything is forever. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

And of course taking the scales out of their relative balance will skew things. But the fact is that all factors taken into account, the scales are "generally" well balanced, in that there are strategic avenues to exploit the relative bonuses gained.

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. But strategically speaking, any of the scales would provide viable strats for one nation or another, depending on what is planned. Arbitrarily changing the value of one scale does not change the answer to the question, it changes the question to - "why am I still playing this horribly imbalanced game?". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

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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.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

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.

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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.

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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. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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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.

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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.

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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.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

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.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

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 &amp; Micah: Yes, a good part of my argument is that order &amp; 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 &amp; 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 &amp; 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.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

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.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

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! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

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.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

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

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

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.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

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.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

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.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

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.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

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.

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

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

-Max

Re: refuting common wisdom on scales everybody kno
 

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.)