[Arralen]

Does by chance anyone of you know the game "Stars!" ?

It's race design process is very similar to that of Dom2:

1) you choose your "primary trait", which governs what secial tech and ships you get (nation)
2) you choose your "secondary traits", which are special abilities (magic paths)
3) you set your economic and environmental characteristics (scales & fort)
4) .. you spend your leftover design points on either a)more starting factories, b)more starting mines, c)more starting minerals, d)more starting defences or e)more starting mineral concentration ..

I must admit, though, that these options are not balanced well. This results from the fact that they never where adjusted for "gameplay reality" but stayed very much the same over the years. But the game was analyzed to death, and today you'll need >25k ressources/turn after 50 turns to be competitive, while the devs considered 2k a good score in the very beginning. So today it's very clear that's either factories or mineral/concentration is the way to go, as it gives you an economic head start.

To get back to Dom2 - if a similar mechanism is added, I would suggest it does not have multiple possibilities to spend your points on, as this is impossible to balance.

But spending you points on it should make a difference, or it would be (obviously) superfluous. And getting 40 or even 80 gold will not give you so much of an economie head start that it at least partly equals out the loss of one scale. (Theoretically. I would second the 39 pts. cap to prevent abuse, though) I think 5:1 would be quite ok - will get you a free temple, or one free (cheap) mage or double starting troops (after some turns of building).