The Growth Scale

[Omnirizon]

Growth

* effects the chance of getting afflictions from old age
  NOTE: does not effect change of getting disease affliction from Miasma!

* effects events
  - growth
    - fertility/harvest (unrest decrease, extra gold)
    - pop gain (pop gain)
    - ancient presence (90% pop death, province taken over by `ancient presence')
  - death
    - dying prince, you get his money/items (1.5k gold 2-3 items)
    - plagues (pop loss)
    - plague + death gems (pop loss, but get death gems; requires magic scale)


* effects all `entangle' spells (they last longer/harder to escape)

* growth can be used to buffer tax pop loss, essentially capitalize into extra income early on without long term losses (any good numbers?)

* effects carrion woods (more undead produced?)

          Growth3  Death2  (would be nice to have 3-3)
-------------------------
0 Year  - 30,000 / 30,000
1 Year  - 32,232 / 28,591
2 Years - 34,631 / 27,248
3 Years - 37,209 / 25,969
4 Years - 39,978 / 24,749
5 Years - 42,953 / 23,587

Growth Scale with multiplication by Order?
------------------------------------------
    D 3  D 2  D 1  Neutral G 1  G 2  G 3
0   114% 116% 119%   121%   123% 126% 128%
6   112% 115% 118%   121%   124% 127% 131%
12  110% 113% 117%   121%   125% 129% 133%
18  108% 112% 116%   121%   126% 130% 135%
24  106% 111% 116%   121%   126% 132% 138%
30  104% 109% 115%   121%   127% 134% 141%
36  102% 108% 114%   121%   128% 135% 143%
42  101% 107% 114%   121%   129% 137% 146%
48  99%  106% 113%   121%   130% 139% 149%
54  97%  104% 112%   121%   130% 140% 151%
60  95%  103% 112%   121%   131% 142% 154%
66  94%  102% 111%   121%   132% 144% 157%
72  92%  101% 110%   121%   133% 146% 160%
78  91%  100% 110%   121%   134% 148% 163%
84  89%  99%  109%   121%   134% 150% 167%
90  88%  98%  109%   121%   135% 151% 170%
96  86%  96%  108%   121%   136% 153% 173%
102 85%  95%  107%   121%   137% 155% 177%

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com//showthread.php?t=32125

I noticed there is no general discussion on the Growth Scale, so I've decided to start one.

Why is there none? Are the dynamics of the scale simply uncontroversial? Or is there simply no strong opinion (or decisive determinants) one way or the other with it?

When is a Growth Scale good to take? I can edit this post with suggestions. perhaps:
1. when going for a blood economy?
2. to counter old age mages
3. just for extra income?

can growth be used as a sort of 'order' scale by simply exploiting it's population growth with extra taxes for an ultimately neutral growth? (doesn't order and dominion both reduce unrest, also canceling that out?)

is the extra supplies of growth really ever useful? Battles are generally at borderlands, where the effects of any scale is probably minimal.

What about the inverse? When can I get away with Death?
What if I don't Blood Hunt, have no old age, but do want extra income and am taking max order. When can I get away taking death?

And for interactions with other scales (notably Order and Luck)

Doesn't Growth effectively magnify Order since it will increase the population for order's income bonus to effect? I think there's already a math thread out there on this, but the conclusions where foggy. I don't think there are any really good plots of just how much Order and Growth interact to boost the effects of each other.

What Luck events does Growth/Death open up? I know Death will allow plagues to happen more often. Does Growth simply prevent them? Or does Growth actually boost the occurrence of some good events (perhaps makes Pop Growth events more likely. We all know to avoid Death/Misfortune. Are there reasons to think seriously about Growth/Luck?

Lastly, give us some comparisons to provide some datapoints here. When is dumping points in Growth more valuable than, say, opening another path on your pretender, having more dominion, not having an imprisoned pretender, or accessing an extra weak bless. Compared to other options, just how valuable is Growth?

I know it's all dependent on context, so feel free to provide some. (I think that's part of the problem, as I see much discussion on Growth in particular context, but almost none in general. I'm hoping there might be some general rules, or at least I'm hoping to gather all the different contexts under one thread to make indexing easier.)

[licker]

I've been toying with the tax and patrol under a growth scale some. I've not run the numbers compared to order (though optimally you take high order as well), but it certainly seems to work for raising immediate cash and providing you some flexibility in allowing your provinces to regrow as you move your patrollers elsewhere.

Ultimately, as you note, it is all dependent on what you are trying to accomplish. If you merely wish to raise alot of money in the first 2 years to boost your castle construction then you can tax and patrol and not even care if your pop comes back (assuming you are not doing massive blood later). For some castles with higher admins, if built in high pop provinces you get that income boost which will help pay back your pop losses from the patroling over time anyway.

It seems that for most nations high pop (meaning over 10k?) long term is just not that important, as you transition either to summons or blood.

Others have run the numbers for growth/death and its effect on old age, and I agree that nominally the supply bonus is largely meaningless, though death can be useful defensively in making supply a bigger issue for invaders.

[Gandalf Parker]

It affects the vine spells of Pangaea.

[chrispedersen]

It affects all the entangles, I think. Something like adds to the DR you have to roll against to break free.

Growth also enables the ancient presence (that takes over the province). And Death (I think) where the guy dies, gives you magic, and a necromancer comes and joins you...

[Omnirizon]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

It affects all the entangles, I think. Something like adds to the DR you have to roll against to break free.

Growth also enables the ancient presence (that takes over the province). And Death (I think) where the guy dies, gives you magic, and a necromancer comes and joins you...

Ah.... that explains why I get a rash of "guy came in search of long lost love, but instead died. you get all his gold and magic items" (or something like that) when playing with Luck3 Death3.

I'ts a good event. something like 1500 gold and a couple of items.
maybe a good reason to play death luck


so... are there any 'growth-luck' events? if not this is sort of a case to take death-luck, it provides just one more nice event. and with all the luck you needn't worry about plagues...

[Gregstrom]

There are a couple of good harvest events. Maybe those require a growth scale. Oh, and the event where celebrations of a local fertility goddess get you some extra money.

[JimMorrison]

Well as far as events go, Growth unlocks (or rather, greatly increases the rate) of "good harvest" events and the like. I often play Blood nations with 3L/3G, and I consistently get those events almost every turn (unless they're blocked by Gem events, boohoo). And under high Growth, there are only 2 negative events unlocked - the Ancient Presence (which wipes out ~90% of the province pop, sucks bad), and the lesser Vine Man Attack event, which seems to kill 5-10% pop in the province. Death scale does unlock a few goodies, but this is balanced by some really terrible events. Sometimes with 2D and even Luck scales (which works well for some nations), I'll get a string of events that kill 20-30% pop in the provinces they occur in - and these events are FAR more likely with Death scale, than the Immigration of Population Boom events are under Growth.

One year (12 turns) under 3 Growth will yield a population 107.5% larger than the start of that year - so it is important to note that in Vanilla Dom3, your capital (and some neighbors) will already be generating ~112% of the income after the first year, that it would have if you had even Growth scales. Some nations are very gold hungry, and if that is combined with Old Age mages, and troops that can expand well enough on their own, makes 3O/3G (very hard to afford with an Awake pretender!) quite attractive in the long term.

Just a quick chart here, comparing relative populations in the capital under 3G vs 2D, starting from 30k even:

1 Year - 32,232 / 28,591
2 Years - 34,631 / 27,248
3 Years - 37,209 / 25,969
4 Years - 39,978 / 24,749
5 Years - 42,953 / 23,587

So after ~60 turns, as the late game mounts up, the 3G player will have over 40% more income from their core territories, resulting in a tremendously increased ability to train/upkeep more high end mages, and (in the case of Tir/Van/etc) expensive elite units, if they so choose. Meanwhile, if the 2D player is using a nation that maybe has cheaper mages, can rely more on summons/freespawn, or is able to make many powerful thugs - they will have a relatively pathetic income by that late stage of the game, but will have had 200 points to leverage into a better bless, or an SC pretender (Awake or otherwise), or any combination of tools applicable to their strategy.

Also bear in mind, "turtling" nations will tend to do proportionately better under Growth, while Death is made most useful as a point sink if you can maintain constant expansion to feed your dwindling economy.

Also, even with 3L, I can't see 3D being viable for anyone but LA Ermor, as the rapid baseline poploss compounds too powerfully with the random Plagues and such to reliably sustain any strategy that involves ever needing money. You'll just get lucky sometimes, but sometimes you're probably twice as lucky to have your game ruined by early bad events, as if you had 2D - plus if you do the math, population decline from 3D erodes your income far faster than 2D.

[Jazzepi]

When I'm considering Growth I simply think of old age mages as another bit of +% income from growth since you don't have to replace as many mages that would die to the diseased affliction from old age.

Jazzepi

[P3D]

There's the O3G3 synergy (maybe G2 too) - there's still some growth (or at least minimal pop loss) without unrest at 110% tax.

[chrispedersen]

I have played D3 fairly often - I don't think its that bad - its the d3L-3 that sucks bad.

Just in terms of events, generally speaking, turmoil and barbarians are worse than the death plague events.

*if* you are playing a Turmoil/Luck approach, you can also play death, it is not as bad as many other alternatives. Luck will give you sufficient income to support an SC or mage based strategy - although probably not a non-sacred army.

*IF* all or most of your magaes are death mages, you can take a death scale with virtual impunity, as very few of your mages will get death afflicted. by death mage I mean at least d2, and preferably d3/d4.

Also, I don't think ancient presence wipes out 90% consistently. Its bad - but I don't recall it being that consistently bad.