[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Zapmeister:
I'm referring to the scales, of course. The interesting choices in this area available in Dom1 have gone. This element of the game has been effectively removed, as all players make very similar choices.

What interesting choices are you refering to? In dom1 if you wanted to play in an MP game cranking up your growth and production scales to 3 was almost a foregone choice. There was an awful lot of complaints about the tax/patrol complex, including that order increased viable tax rate rather than taxes thus increasing MM. Also the positive scale effects where so beneficial that there were no reason to invest more than leftover design points into your pretender. While it certainly might be true that some scale settings are not viable options it is my heartfelt belief that more scale settings are viable in MP games than there was before. Also I think it is advisable to wait with tampering once again with the scale settings, at least until more MP games have been played and there is a little more dom2 MP game experience in the player base.

How do you now that all people use the same or very similar scale settings? While there might be a general feeling in this forum that some scales are under- or overpowered I think your claim is a bit premature. I guess that the similar scale design you attribute to all players is order 3 misfortune 3. I believe people tend to overestimate the effects of the bad events. A loss of 20% of the pop in your home province represents a loss perhaps of 30-50gp turn, which is not all that terrible. It would take appr. 13 turns to translate that into a loss of 500gp. Recieving 500gp as an event is not all that uncommon with turmoil 3 luck 3, and if you do recieve such a turn it would compensate for several turns not only of decreased income due to the turmoil but also for potentional loss due to negative events. There is also the fact that you will never recieve any national heroes with misfortune 3. I am not saying that turmoil 3 luck 3 is better than order 3 misfortune 3, just that it is a choice that does not deserve to be dismissed as unplaybale in MP's at this stage.

Finally I just wish to point out that some of the old cspigs crowd (I think George McGinn, at least, requested this although I do not remember if it was on cspigs or on the cgOnline forum) asked for a greater chance of bad events happening even with luck scale +3, because they never got to see any bad events since they were allways playing with maxed luck and felt they were missing out on features.

*Edit: what I do think is a problem, is that the obvious choices are +3 -3 or -3 +3.

[ November 24, 2003, 01:28: Message edited by: johan osterman ]