Oh - again, I personally think that any positive scale should, in theory, balance any negative scale at the same level. Even in theory, that's very difficult for a game as (Hi Arryn) complex as Dom2.
But currently the scales are .... somewhat less than balanced, by a long shot. Remember - I'm one of the players who tries Turmoil-3, Luck-3 paired, and I don't spend much time complaining.
But it still goes back to when Zen mocked me (reasonably gently) as a newbie for doing T3/L3 pairings, and they simply aren't viable for most nations. ( People more justifiably mocked me for smiting the arch evil Ermor by ... taking provinces away from Pythium, but hey - it was a VQ in the water, it was a purple flag, and dammit! The inquisition is better known for enthusiasm than wisdom, and I was playing Marignon in one of my first 3 non-demo, non SP games (yes, they were the same 3 games
))
Certain scales are currently considered unbalanced : Order and Magic on the good side, especially, and many players think Death is a no-brainer for a good sized map, and order and misfortune is consider a NoB by most also. (this was an edit, so crucify me only if you're cute.)
It would be nice if there weren't so many no brainers. But that's complicated - kudos to Zen for only doing the pretenders at first.
Still : Growth seems like it ought to give population increase more often. Luck
really ought to eliminate the catastrophic events in the first 5 turns, at least. Certain events (we all know the ones) shouldn't be considered "lucky" anymore - I don't know a nation that would consider them lucky, except possibly Mictlan (only nation left I haven't played). Productivity ....
Heh. Productivity I would be glad to hear people sing hymns to. But they don't. Too many nations / themes take sloth as a no-brainer, and even ones with resource-heavy troups simply take an expense castle to make up for Sloth.
Growth, Productivity, and Luck, don't get considered are being particularly "good" scales. Heat / Cold is only considered with respect to neighbors, and personally, if I know there are 3 cold nations and no heat ones, I'm torn: should I take heat to screw them? No. I should take cold, since my territories are going to be cold anyways.
Order and Magic are generally considered "duhs!" with nothing countering them. No one, and I mean no one, takes Drain. (Okay - I think I would have won a game using drain with Helheim and death research items, but that involved Sheap, Norfleet, and the game hasn't run in 3 weeks)
Sheesh - going back to read what I wrote up top, and I'm like, "who was that!"
Thing is - some of the negative scales can be used 'creatively', but generally only with a death nation, Ulm, or maybe a stealth nation. And it really does seem (in my long winded way) that the scales should balance.
Currently they don't, at least not from the POV of someone who plays everything but (ewwww!) mictlan and ermor.