[DrPraetorious]

All of the level-3 negative scales are a *major* drawback.

For most strategies, Sloth-3 is the least major. There are obviously a few situations (Pangaea) where it isn't much of a drawback at all, but that's got to be figured into the game. It's still a huge penalty, though, as EA Ermor, for example, I generally do take Sloth-3, but it's not like I'm happy to get -50% principes out of my forts. If you made sloth-3 any *bigger* penalty it would be completely impossible to play as a sloth-3 nation unless you had an awake SC pretender to expand, and *that* is not desirable either, so I don't think Sloth-3 needs to be made any worse. It's just understood that, for many nations, Sloth-3 is the least-crippling of the major drawbacks you can take.

OTOH, Productivity-3 is taken quite seldom. I take it as LA Ulm, LA or MA Jotunheim, and LA Pangaea, and I take it near-last among the positive scales that I do take.

So Productivity-3 should be better. I think reduced fort construction time and building costs would be an ideal benefit - the fact that a construction time penalty for Sloth wouldn't really come up much doesn't bother me, b/c I actually want to reward Productivity rather than punish Sloth.