The Growth Scale

[OmikronWarrior]

Geez, didn't you read the strategy index? My Growth and Death by the numbers is there.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=35801

As the question itself, when do you get growth? Here's my answer:

1) When you want to pursue a high gold strategy and already have Order-3. Growth and Order are great together.

2) When you plan on recruiting a lot of old age mages.

3) When you plan on doing a lot of blood hunting (not some, but a lot).

4) When you've already taken misfortune, especially if you've picked up Turmoil for whatever reason.

Note, note all of these reasons require Growth-3, just some Growth. However, due to exponential population increases, you get more for your points buying the third point of growth than the first.

[WraithLord]

Originally Posted by cleveland

A nation with a Growth scale is kinda like a turkey.

Things are really great for a while...your armies are fat and your treasury is happy. Maybe you coughed up too many design points to fly, but heh, life's good, right?

Then someone drops a couple Thanksgiving Armageddons on your ***.

[/i]

Nothing can take away gains that you already made due to growth. Extra income from growth translates to more research/armies/mages - which in turn can translate to controlling more turf and getting more income. The beneficial effect on blood hunting must also be considered.
So now on turn >60 someone dropped a few armeggedons. Your population dies. But you still have your research and gems and territories. And by turn 60 you will be much less income dependent. And less so with every passing turn.

I like the G scale. I won't take it always of course. It depends on my game plan but usually for big maps and with a non-rushing nation I'd tend to favor the G scale.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by WraithLord

So now on turn >60 someone dropped a few armeggedons. Your population dies. But you still have your research and gems and territories. And by turn 60 you will be much less income dependent. And less so with every passing turn.

You're also (under 3G) somewhat likely to even have a little disposable income after a couple of Armageddons, whereas most other people will already be solidly in deficit. Sure if they do 5-6 you'll certainly be in the hole as well - but your population will still be proportionately higher, providing more supplies for your existing troops, and allowing more robust Blood hunting in the aftermath.

[cleveland]

Originally Posted by WraithLord

Nothing can take away gains that you already made due to growth...

Except that one of those Armageddons picked off your pretender because you had to choose some crappy 10hp Master Druid or something.

Meanwhile, your neighbor that took Death-2 and invested his 200 design points in a proper Turn 1 Super Combatant still has his 7-star demigod, who laughs menacingly from atop the Hall of Fame, accompanied by his Artifact-clad SC cohorts...Artifacts afforded through mages hired from the half-dozen capitals he single-handedly captured before your Druid stopped hitting the snooze-bar...or ripped from the bodies of his foes.

Uses for the extra 200 gold/month your post-Apocalyptic populace is contributing:
1) Hurl it against the invincible hide of the Future Pantokrator.
2) Bullet purchase.
2) Gun rental.

[OmikronWarrior]

Originally Posted by cleveland

Except that one of those Armageddons picked off your pretender because you had to choose some crappy 10hp Master Druid or something.

Meanwhile, your neighbor that took Death-2 and invested his 200 design points in a proper Turn 1 Super Combatant still has his 7-star demigod, who laughs menacingly from atop the Hall of Fame, accompanied by his Artifact-clad SC cohorts...Artifacts afforded through mages hired from the half-dozen capitals he single-handedly captured before your Druid stopped hitting the snooze-bar...or ripped from the bodies of his foes.

Uses for the extra 200 gold/month your post-Apocalyptic populace is contributing:
1) Hurl it against the invincible hide of the Future Pantokrator.
2) Bullet purchase.
2) Gun rental.

I have to disagree with your priorities here Cleveland. SC's are vulnerable to numerous spells and counters: Frozen Heart, Soul Slay, Stellar Casscades, anti-thug with AN weapon, etc. Growth and high gem income (enabled by a rainbow pretender) give a boomer the tools to handle an SC rusher quite handily.

Basically, armies proper > SCs > armies w/o support.

By midgame, using mages to spam elemental damage spells does more damage per turn than anything an SC can come up with.

[AdmiralZhao]

I would disagree with Cleveland about purchasing a bullet, since it seems more efficient to just rent one. The rest of his statement seems accurate though.

The 120 points that you spent on growth can go a long way towards the purchase of a shiny new SC pretender. This will let you take an extra province per turn, greatly increasing your first year's growth (e.g. taking 2 provinces on turn 2 instead of 1, taking 4 provinces on turn 8 instead of 3, taking 5 provinces on turn 12 instead of 4). Besides being invaluable in early wars, a well managed SC is going to grow your empire at a lot more than 0.6% per turn, and that early growth can then be leveraged into all sorts of new opportunities. I think it was KissBlade who said that in most games the winner is decided by turn 20. While I don't think that is entirely right, I do think that by turn 20 you certainly know who is not going to win. You need early expansion if you are going to be competitive in the mid-late game, as even a high growth, high gem income nation with 20 provinces won't be able to compete with a high death, low gem income nation with 60 provinces.

I would also point out that in the early game, when I am evaluating who to attack, growth scales are a great indicator of who is stocking away points for late game efficiency at the expense of their early game survivability.

[licker]

Well there are gambits to be had here apparently...

High growth does not in any way preclude SC type pretenders, even awake ones, even with decent other scales (of course this is entirely nation dependent).

As is always true for dominions, there is more than one way to skin a cat.

[WraithLord]

OW took the words out of my mouth

And I want to add on licker's observation.

SCs do not contradict G3. You can take a 4S or pathless Wyrm and make it a fine SC with or w/o G3.

SCs have their uses but IMHO they are mostly orthogonal to the G3 vs. D3 decision.

I still think G3 is better when you have a long term plan on a big map. In case you have a death dom nation or playing a small map or planning for a strong rush that won't end until complete victory then by all means take D3. Just don't be too surprised you won't be to most popular guy on the block b/c if you have death dominion and if you are rushing and leading the score graphs (which is your ideal with D3) you will be hard pressed to find friends.
OtoH a G3 peaceful nation would have that much more income and research that could jump it much faster to endgame research.

So when you make the G/D choice you better have a well thought of game plan

[Sombre]

I don't think a death 3 dominion is going to make diplomacy any harder than a growth one. It just isn't much of a factor. It isn't like you're Ermor or Rlyeh or anything, it will at most mean some lost pop on your borders.

[licker]

The point wasn't so much about taking death in and of itself, it was about how most nations need to play when they take death, which is to paint a gigantic bullseye on their ***