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MaxWilson said:
The one thing that troubles me about your post is that your refutations all have the sound of knocking down straw men.
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I'll go ahead and let QM refute this point.

At any rate, I've no problem if nobody disagrees with me, I'm refuting sentiments that I feel are common. I'm not referring to the really odd scenarios like LA Ermor (order) or MA Ulm (drain), but the fact that it seems to me plenty of people take the scales I mention 95% of the time.
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quantum_mechani said:
Many of your points are valid- lots of gold without a good outlet doesn't do much good, taking sloth is not the best option for some nations, drain is useful mine when you need points - but I absolutely cannot agree that order 3 is not optimal in all but the most unusual of situations. While it's true it is possible to find yourself in a situation without a good gold outlet, that is very rare. Almost all nations can channel gold to immediate and significant effect- either buying the better mages that can boost research and provide an ace in the hole in battle magic, or simply worthwhile troops (this applies even for nations that benefit from prod- they benefit even more if they can afford more heavy troops). And as other have pointed out, even when supposing you have sufficient gold for your mages and troops of choice, building forts with gold is an almost universally worthwhile application.
This is not to say you cannot be quite successful with turmoil 3, with any nation. Obviously the gold available to each nation can vary a great deal, regardless of scales, but that in no way implies that stacking the deck against yourself is a good idea. The bottom line as I see it is that order is such an all purposely useful scale, that realistically there are very few things you could sacrifice those points for a better return.
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Yes, in a vacuum more order is always good, no argument. My point is not that you ever have 'enough' gold, and I certainly never meant to imply that not having a good outlet for gold was common. My point was rather that there is a opportunity cost to everything and 'automatically' taking order-3 in every build you do is not always the most optimal choice. This is amplified by the 'expand at any cost' mentality where you burn gold to get as many (perhaps more lightly armored than optimal) troops out as fast as you can. Don't get me wrong, that's an obviously valid strategy. My assertion is it's not always the only competitive one.
To reiterate, my point is that you can, in lots of situations end up with more gold in hand by taking ie. production scales rather than order. You can, in some situations have more gold in hand by taking a higher bless rather than order, or an awake pretender.