Observations after a month of play

[SelfishGene]

- Provinces don't seem to have any natural growth rate without Growth scale, and i can't emphasise enough how detrimental this seems to be. Just a tiny natural growth rate of 0.2 or so would be sufficient.

- Growth/Death weakest of the scales. You never take Death unless you must, and you shouldn't take Growth over Order if you want income. In theory a large empire could grow by a few gold per turn into a much larger empire than one that used only Order and suffered the normal pop loss (random events, patrolling, ect), but im fairly sure it doesn't work this way. Order provides simply far too much income for Growth to overtake it during the length of a normal game.

Unless the effect of the Growth scale is increased i'd suggest adding some sort of additional combat effect. Like, say, Growth dominion has 5% chance of healing an affliction per level for both friend and enemy units; Death perhaps the opposite (excepting maybe undead/demon units). Or just drop the afflictions for Death but add them for Growth. Or perhaps add reinvigoration per level (1/2/3)? (The idea being the inhabitants of a fertile, sopophoric land are more vigorous and have greater health and stamina; the opposite could be true for a Death dominion).

-Mercenaries feel somewhat too powerful. I find myself using them obsessively no matter which faction or scales taken. The real problem is that the AI doesn't seem eager enough to hire Mercs rather than their combat effectiveness.

[edit: actually just noticed something new. Scales seem to affect Merc hiring cost? Testing a 3-Disorder/3-Sloth Pangaea Merc companies were about 1.25 to 2x more expensive.]

-Golem Cult, Water Cult seem the least used and useful Special Dominions.

-The Lord of Fertility's advertised passive benefit has no apparent effect.

-Rain.1/4 pop drowning.1/4 income vanishing.Too hard with the Sucking.

-Bogus! Dude.

[ March 16, 2004, 01:47: Message edited by: SelfishGene ]