refuting common wisdom on scales everybody knows

[quantum_mechani]

dirtywick said:

I was saying that taking turmoil only frees up points for luck.

However, I don't think it's a suboptimal choice if you can use diverse gems effectively or you just don't need a lot of gold. For example, in EA Ulm's most expensive mage is 220 gold and that's cap only and they've got no cavalry or otherwise expensive units. Arco, Oceania, Lanka, and R'lyeh are in the same boat to a lesser degree, barring a few expensive cap only units or whatever.

Then, you've got Caelum that has mammoths and Seraphs to pay for, Sauromatia which is almost all cav, hydras, and expensive mages, Agartha has very few cheap units, and Hinnom is just ridiculously gold dependant for any of it's units.

Then some are in between.

Some nations just don't need gold as badly as others, so you have some wiggle room in the scales.

In general, I find people tend to overstate the difficulty of getting magic diversity- it takes some significant bad luck (of the none scale sort) and magic restricted nation to lock you in for the most part. This is especially true in most MP games where trading is an option.

It's certainly true some nations demand gold even more than others- but that doesn't mean that it's not extremely valuable for any nation.

Ballbarian: I've seen some very imbalanced games, but almost by nature that usually means that more than one option was left super-powered.

[Dragar]

One point missed so far in favour of Production scales is that by targetting high resource troops you are also lowering your upkeep. A strategy focused on low gold/high resource troops (as long as your nation has the appropriate units) will result in a substantially lower upkeep cost per turn.

[JimMorrison]

Dragar said:
One point missed so far in favour of Production scales is that by targetting high resource troops you are also lowering your upkeep. A strategy focused on low gold/high resource troops (as long as your nation has the appropriate units) will result in a substantially lower upkeep cost per turn.

And to simplify the equation, take a quick look at O3/S3.

You are gaining 115% of the normal gold, and receiving 55% of normal resources.

Shifting 1 scale to O2/S2, puts you at 110% of normal gold, and 70% of normal resources. You just traded 4.35% of your net gold income, for a 27.2% increase in resources. Yes, you may argue that you would always steal those points from somewhere else if you don't want Sloth 3 in a particular game. My argument is, if EVERYTHING else balanced out exactly how you wanted it to, with most nations you would still be better off making that choice, as very few nations actually prosper militarily under S3, unless you have an awake PoD, and even then you may expand fine at first, but you are always going to be handicapped in that way.

Really, it comes down to strategy, and any strategy must be well thought out to be successful. Saying that O3 is 100% necessary, is akin to saying that S9 on your pretender is "absolutely necessary". There is no such thing, there are just some strategic elements that are easier to use, and some that are more versatile, there are NONE that are universally irreplaceable.

<3

[quantum_mechani]

JimMorrison said:
There is no such thing, there are just some strategic elements that are easier to use, and some that are more versatile, there are NONE that are universally irreplaceable.

I agree with this, in principle (and there are even rare situations I'd advocate turmoil... mainly LA Ermor). However, keep in mind that you offer your own universal statement- would you say the same if order were, say, 15% per tick?

[JimMorrison]

The only universality that I offer is that there is no universality. But just as I might say nothing is forever, you could reasonably argue that everything is forever.

And of course taking the scales out of their relative balance will skew things. But the fact is that all factors taken into account, the scales are "generally" well balanced, in that there are strategic avenues to exploit the relative bonuses gained.

Take for example, if in a particular scenario, you were given perfect temp scale, and you were allowed +3 on ALL scales except for 1, that MUST be at -3. I can guarantee you 90% of the people who read these boards would put 3 Sloth with impunity. But strategically speaking, any of the scales would provide viable strats for one nation or another, depending on what is planned. Arbitrarily changing the value of one scale does not change the answer to the question, it changes the question to - "why am I still playing this horribly imbalanced game?".

Fortunately, our wonderfully thoughtful and intelligent game devs saw fit to not make any one scale stand out sufficiently to make it absolutely necessary to a viable game strat - and that is why most of us are here now.

[Endoperez]

They tried, at least. I'm not sure if they succeeded, because there's a need for a thread like this.


Baalz - I like your line of thinking, but I'm not experienced enough to argue against quantum and other players with MP experience.

[quantum_mechani]

JimMorrison said:


Fortunately, our wonderfully thoughtful and intelligent game devs saw fit to not make any one scale stand out sufficiently to make it absolutely necessary to a viable game strat - and that is why most of us are here now.

I've never said you can't play a perfectly successful game with even the most unlikely and unsynergetic pretender design, but, just as if the scale were 15% a tick, there are good choices and worse ones. In any case, I don't think of imbalance as a disease that strikes certain games, more like a spectrum that every game lies somewhere along. Perfect balance is as unattainable as a perfect geometric figure, but it can almost always be improved on. In fact, in a game as complex as dominions, it would be rather shocking if some options didn't turn out much better than others, no matter how careful the developers.

[JimMorrison]

quantum_mechani said:

I've never said you can't play a perfectly successful game with even the most unlikely and unsynergetic pretender design, but, just as if the scale were 15% a tick, there are good choices and worse ones. In any case, I don't think of imbalance as a disease that strikes certain games, more like a spectrum that every game lies somewhere along. Perfect balance is as unattainable as a perfect geometric figure, but it can almost always be improved on. In fact, in a game as complex as dominions, it would be rather shocking if some options didn't turn out much better than others, no matter how careful the developers.

But it's not "much better", that's the argument here. Yes, some nations are absolutely gold dependent, but most are not to a great extreme. You can't use 15% gold on Order scales as an argument, because that's not the way the game works. Obviously, gold is easier for most people to use to full effect, and has the bonus of accruing even when you do not use it, where the other scales are somewhat more conditional, and require more active exploitation as part of the strategy.

Even more valid than an argument of whether skewing the balance would change the relative value of the scale, is the argument that sometimes you will start in very lean territory. The age-old argument between Order and Luck always seems to necessarily assume a certain abundance of wealth. If that base value were reduced significantly, such as starting in a position where all of your easy expansion is into mountains and wastes, then the Luck scale becomes proportionately more relevant, and Order becomes somewhat marginalized.

The difference between the two arguments, is that sometimes you DO start surrounded by mountains and wastes, but yet no matter how many pretenders I create, I never get 15% income per tick of Order.

[MaxWilson]

JimMorrison said:
Take for example, if in a particular scenario, you were given perfect temp scale, and you were allowed +3 on ALL scales except for 1, that MUST be at -3. I can guarantee you 90% of the people who read these boards would put 3 Sloth with impunity.

I'd probably pick Misfortune. Prod does have its uses, and I don't care about heroes.

-Max