100% agreement with Saber on this. This is a fantasy game. Balance is more important that realism. Besides you can always explain growth as immigration or increased number of people now prosperous enough to pay taxes.
I understand the intention behind making Production +3 less needed, however my fear is that we will end with the exact opposite situation where competive players will almost always favor -3. Again I haven't seen the new game in action... but this is my concern.
In Dom I, I would often take Prod +3, Drain +3. If that has now changed to Sloth +3, Magic +3, we have a shift, but there is still imbalance. The idea is to inspire the use of all scales, not to rotate problems.
With the information at hand (which is limited) it appears that Order +3 is almost required. Production and Growth look watered down to the point that I'm not sure I care about them. Luck looks the same as always. Magic looks like the new place to toss the extra nation points.
With less gold but lots of points to spend on magic and magic scale, my thought is that players are going to go crazy making super combatant pretenders.
I'd like to hear from some of the beta testers, as you guys have much more experience in this matter than I. What scale choices have you been inspired to use? How does the balance between military and magic feel, in your opinion.
We don't have a demo to examine yet, please throw us a bone.
