Re: The Growth Scale
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.
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