Scales under CB

[OG_Gleep]

I have been playing races recently that my strategy relies heavily on taxes. Looking at the scales in CB, Order is the obvious choice. But when looking at what I can take a hit in, theres not much options. Production/Sloth Heat/Cold Growth/Death all have moderate to large impacts on gold income.

Net Gains Per tick
Order/Sloth +3%
Order/Heat/Cold +1%
Order/Death +3%

You are putting a lot of points into one basket for minimal gain.

The only real options are Magic and Luck. Personally I really like some luck, and taking Drain outside of Ulm can really hurt you in the long run with any race that doesn't have access to cheap researchers.

In a regular richness environemnt all of the above is amplified. I see a lot of people taking Order while taking a hit in atleast one of the above mentioned scales. I was wondering what your opinions are on this.

[Oversway]

In the unmodded game, Order 3 Misfortune 2 was standard. Death 2 or 3 was pretty common as well. The bad effects rarely outweighed the good.

Now it is more of a trade off, which seems to be your issue.

I don't see why you won't take sloth if you have low resource troops. If you take Order 3 Sloth 3, you get a net gain of 9% for zero point cost. Part of the game is can you have to do something with that savings to make up for the sloth?

But if you don't like it, you can go for great scales and have a less powerful pretender & blessing effects. That is a viable choice, too.

[OG_Gleep]

I have my basic strategy laid out already. Thats not really where this question was coming from. It was more of an overall strategy question, when put into a specific context.

I don't know if that came off right or not.

[Cainehill]

Not seeing much of a question there.

People take Order - sometimes they don't don't negative scales.

Or they take Order, and they take scales that won't have as much of an effect to offset it : heat/cold or whatever.

Note that your original post says "Order/Sloth", "Order/Heat", "Order/Death" making it rather difficult to see what point you're trying to make, especially since your numbers seem off unless you're trying to show how much you profit by taking a level of order vice sloth/etc. In which case it should be pretty obvious that offseting Order with Sloth is - profit. Order vice death - profit. What's hard to understand here? Especially since some nations & strategies have almost zero need for resources from Productivity, some themes force death, and some nations want a different base temperature.

[Zen]

OG -

The changes in CB were made with a guideline and QM has followed that guideline in his further progression. That guideline is to make every option availiable and usable.

Unfortunately there is alot of limitation in the Mod tools in Dom2. I was grateful for the amount that was put in (after it's initial release, as free content) as it allowed this idea to be seen.

There is a strong counterbalance in God/Scale selection. There are quite a few intricate decisions you can make and move forward with depending on the type of game and nation you play. That is the intent. Playstyle and national/Pretender theme are a great strength of Dom2. It would be a disservice to limit the great strategic depth that Dom2 offers because of limiting choices.

Magic scale cannot be modded in any fashion. So it remains an anchor of which balance has to be done around. Along with that the intention to create a sense of balance between the magic and material of playing Dom2 and all the different ways and styles you can allowing every type of person or playstyle a chance at being significant.

So while the changes may not be exactly what is wanted, they are what can be done with what is availiable.

[OG_Gleep]

Guess I shouldn't post stuff when I'm tired, though I don't know if I can explain this right even now.

The question comes from looking at the changes made to the scales in CB, and talking to a couple people who echoed both of your sentiments, and reading old threads. Need Gold? Low Resource Units? Take Order/Sloth.

But when looking at the scales under CB, I don't think that Production/Sloth is only related to resources anymore. Yes, it has a huge impact on them, but the impact on income is significant (to me atleast). And on top of that if your strategy involves building troops, your going to need resources. Even if you have a booming economy, your only going to be able to build troops up to your resource point. Taking potentially 45% hit in resources will significantly limit the amount of troops you can build in your forward forts. Its a double whammy. Your taking a hit to your economy, and a hit to the amount of troops you can build.

since your numbers seem off unless you're trying to show how much you profit by taking a level of order vice sloth/etc

The numbers are the Net profit per tick of the scales. I don't know what part gave you the impression I didn't understand. At the end you will see a +X, being the actual profit gained.

Especially since some nations & strategies have almost zero need for resources from Productivity, some themes force death, and some nations want a different base temperature.

The scope of my original post only covers those nations/themes/strategies that rely heavily on income.

Again, I admit I could have been more clear, but the intent was to get practical feedback on the impact of the changes.

Because of the random nature of the game, its really hard to test the impact of the scales I mentioned due to the fact that you will most likely never have the same game twice, and I realised that what looks good on paper doesn't nessisarily mean it will work in the game.

[OG_Gleep]

Hehe ok that settles it, no posting for atleast an hour after I wake up.

I actually like the changes Zen, I'm sorry if it came off like a complaint.

[Cainehill]

OG_Gleep said:
The question comes from looking at the changes made to the scales in CB, and talking to a couple people who echoed both of your sentiments, and reading old threads. Need Gold? Low Resource Units? Take Order/Sloth.

But when looking at the scales under CB, I don't think that Production/Sloth is only related to resources anymore. Yes, it has a huge impact on them, but the impact on income is significant (to me atleast). And on top of that if your strategy involves building troops, your going to need resources. Even if you have a booming economy, your only going to be able to build troops up to your resource point. Taking potentially 45% hit in resources will significantly limit the amount of troops you can build in your forward forts. Its a double whammy. Your taking a hit to your economy, and a hit to the amount of troops you can build.

Some players almost never built troops with certain nations / themes. Or at least, never want to build enough troops that they're going to be resource bound. If a unit costs 70 gold and 16 resources (Vanheim's Van) I'm rarely going to be able to afford so many that I care about the resources - I'll run out of gold, I'll run into the 1 sacred per point of dominion limit, etc. Since I essentially never buy any troops other than Vans, I can easily afford Sloth.

As you say - I take a hit on income. But if I also took Order (which, actually, I rarely do), I'm still making a net profit. And if I take Sloth-3, I only have enough resources to buy 3 Vans a turn - but I can't afford that many initially at any rate.

I take my first province - even with Sloth-3, I now have enough resources in the capitol (with a 30-admin fort) to build 4 vans a turn. Don't I wish I could afford that many!
Second province I take, I now have 81 resources, but have never been able to afford more than 3 a turn gold-wise.

In any case - taking a high-admin fort can gain back a lot of resource lost to Sloth. And, if by taking sloth I get more of a badass pretender, I can expand more quickly. That means more resources, more gold, more gems - and gems are what I really want. Provinces I don't own _never_ give me any gold or resources.

Another tactic to minimize the effect of Sloth (and other bad scales) - don't bother spreading your dominion.

Edit : But anyway - yes, there is rarely a totally free ride. That was kinda the point of the CB mods - to make it so that there were no "no-brainer" choices anymore, where in the base game, taking sloth, or death, or heat / cold had so little effect that they were easy choices, as was Order/Misfortune. Similarly, the base game had a number of "no brainer" pretender choices - the Ghost King and a few others were so superior to 90% of the others that you'd see mostly those few pretenders, over and over.

Some players have one set of priorities with the scales and whatnot, other players have different ideas, making for a more varied game. Some players go for monster scales (Order, Productivity, Growth, Magic _and_ Luck), at the expense of a relatively weak pretender. Some go for balance; others go for the monster pretender or monster bless, and some do different things in different games.

[archaeolept]

your numbers are still off, as income loss due to temperature undergoes seasonal variation.

ie., in base game income loss is 5% per pt away from optimum, but in reality taking one point off will usually average out as a 2.5% loss on income.

for ex., if you are pythium, and take a balanced temp scale, still half the time temperature will be "out of whack" by 1 pip; ie. an average 2.5% loss. Taking your base temp as heat 1 will yield an average 5% loss...

[OG_Gleep]

First that is an intersting post. I did a few tests, and like every other single thing I try to test, I got varied results. In the environment you described, it really depended on the starting position. When I started in rich farmlands (great for taxes), resources became a major problem (last one had 80 in the capitol). When starting with a whole bunch of mountains, not so much.

The problem, even with 30 admin forts, with this setup is once you hit your enemy and start building forward bases. I didn't alter my strategy at all, I built bases at key positions, and bases in good strategic positions. Both bases had issues unless they were surrounded by resource rich environments.

My basic theory at this point, which I am having a hard time testing, is to forget order, and aim for Production +3 or growth +3. If the net gain is 3% anyway, you come out 1% ahead economy wise and don't take the penalties sloth and death bring. I have played around with it a bit, and I don't know if its more effective or not, but it tends to give me more options.

As you said each player has his/her own style and what their priorities are different. My style tends to be balanced armies, as such the above works better for me.

Arch - I'm sure that your right. I wasn't doing any complicated math, just listing what was in the cb readme.