[Baalz]

Well, everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I might argue that there are *other* ways to get what productivity gives you. I'm not saying productivity is "da bomb", just that it is a viable alternative in a lot of situations to going with an expansion pretender or taking order-3. If you're going with lower resource troops (certainly a viable strategy) you'll often need more of them to be effective so you're spending more gold and have more upkeep whittling away the benefit of order over productivity. Sometimes you don't have the option of recruiting elsewhere - cap only troops or good indies so your recruitment is permanently resource constrained. Sometimes you are both gold and resource restricted - ie you can afford 10 infantry but if you had more resources you'd get heavy infantry rather than medium. How much more effective is a LA Arco heavy elephant than 10 light infantry? It's not a linear progression, sometimes the sweet spot just requires a certain amount of resources.

Order-3 vs Prod-3, 15% more gold and lower randoms vs 50% more resources. Does the higher resources combine to boost your expansion, reduce your troop cost, and reduce your castling needs by 15%? Perhaps, as I said it's a situational decision. Perhaps I want to take luck scales. Perhaps I need an imprisoned pretender for other reasons. Perhaps I've got really crappy non-cap national mages and don't plan to put up many castles to recruit them. Do I always take productivity? Of course not, but I think the people claiming it's never a competitive choice are silly.