refuting common wisdom on scales everybody knows

[Zeldor]

The biggest problem is that there are some nations that can afford goods scales and other can't. Especially it is true about "free 150 points nation" which do not need awake pretender. Some nations are lucky to have great expansion early and great game later.

Other ones just need to do something to survive first 2 years. So they need to waste [yes, waste] 150 points to get awake pretender. And that is almost 4 scales and not cheap SC chassis. You have to make sacrifices. And even if you are resource heavy nation productivity is the least painful one. You use your SC to conquer provinces around capitol. You get good land - you get nice resources. If you get bad ones - well, you'd be doomed with prod3 too.

If all nations had viable early-game expansion options then awake SC pretender would be really a choice for those that want to get few more provinces in exchange for scales.