Quote:
Baalz said:
I think maybe the sticking point here is that you guys are arguing: "ok, so production can be a good idea, but you'd be much better in these situations going with production AND order!". Ok, again, I've got to say there's the opportunity cost, what are you giving up? Sure, it's best to take order, production, an awake pretender, a positive magic scale and the kitchen sink as well. Do you take the extra gold from order at the expense of losing some magic diversity? At the cost of slowing down your initial expansion and putting yourself more at risk of a rush? At the cost of slowing down your research? Suck the points our of luck, of course - though I think I've made a point that that's not a no-brainer. There is a cost, and IMO its not always better to take order.
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That is indeed the sticking point - I have never argued that there are not uses for prod. As I said before, there is a degree of diminishing returns as you spend point on expanding faster, just based on logistics (not to mention being spread thin). What this means, is that you generally do not need to mine order while more or less optimizing your expansion. And unlike factors like expanding pretender + bless, order does not add but
multiply your gold advantage.
There is no denying by putting points in order you are not putting points elsewhere, and many of these other spending options are by their nature difficult to quantify in value. Given that, I can only say that in order's indispensability is based on it's universal applicability. Magic scale, blesses, prod scale, etc are not generally critical components all at the same time. And even if they were, you don't have enough gold to make the best use of them... unless perhaps you have order.