Quote:
Originally Posted by Amorphous
Look at it like this:
Scales are more powerful.
Sure, order is down a percentage point, but production is up two and the population growth of the growth-scale, as well as both values of the luck scale, is increased.
Pretenders are more powerful.
Sure some are toned down a bit and a few are the same, but the majority of them are cheaper or better - frequently both. This includes staples such as the master lich and the great enchantress.
Recruits are more powerful.
Sure, there are a few that have increased costs in some form, but the changes across the board are decreased gold cost, decreased resource cost and decreased encumbrance.
While the removal of hammers and gem generators make cost comparisons rather dicey when it comes to forging, it is quite clear that, in general, items in CBM require less research, less paths and are frequently more powerful, too.
I could go on, but I think you get the picture.
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I think most of that is accounted for by the style of balancing used--people tend to get bent out of shape by making overtuned strategies/units less powerful, and they get excited when lackluster units/pretenders get enhanced to be in line with the power of other options. A lot of the point of all this is to make it "worth it" to not just go with the default strategies but to allow people to experiment without being unduly punished for it.
Pretenders getting 'extras' might be the most useful to talk about. There are a lot of choices for most nations, pretender-wise. Many of them are rather similar, with only one difference in paths(usually not even paths the nation wants on a pretender, even). Unless the pretenders give you different things, things that are worth it, people will tend to just pick one of the two or so 'good' chassis and ignore the rest. I can't think of a different way to make it so a player feels they have lots of genuinely good pretender options to choose from. They have to serve slightly different purposes or go about doing something in different ways. I'm liking CBM's current balancing of Wyrm/Manticore/Dragon...they're all viable expanders, but with different strengths and weaknesses and magic access. And to make that choice not obvious, the Manticore and Dragons had to get a few advantages they didn't before.
I do definitely understand what you're getting at, though. I'm not sure I would call it power gamey, though.