[tinkthank]

I'm no expert, but I like this theme quite a lot.
I do invest in magic scales, since the access to 75-gold sacred MotD are just wonderful with magic; an owl quill never hurts either, of course.

I also tend to go with 2-3 luck, since this is often nice for income, and gets me my heros quickly. My "strategy" requires attaining a death-2 mage before too late, and if I dont find any of those harab seraphs or onyx amazons, the grumpy guy with the crutch does quite nicely.

I also tend to go low-point castle, for more scales or whatever you want on your pretender; lots of forts is nice for lots of mages; I go mageocracy anyhow, with flying CMs this seems to me to be the way to go. Archers are only 9 resources, and I like them, so I am not so resource worried.

But as to my choice of scales, that really depends on my enemies. If I am up against Ermor, I might just take a point of growth and productivity anyhow, just to counteract any dominion of his -- plus the extra cash helps, even a little.

I am sure the experts here will disagree or say something different, but I have fun with this.