Productive Scale needs some Enhancements

[Sombre]

If production scale helped with buildings, that would make it more useful, that's for sure.

It could also help with construction spells the same way that growth scale increases the potency of some spells. So in production 3 you get more mechanical men or whathaveyou.

I don't think it should run over into forging, because that's too hard to balance, but improving construction summons would be neat.

[llamabeast]

Hmm, I often take production. Almost always in fact. Interesting.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Play Late Era Atlantis, and tell me gold is still the limiting factor. The most expensive commander outside of capitals is sacred, 130 gold. All your ice infantry cost 10-16 gold, but lots of resources. You do have Mournful, but those are often neglected in favor of troops that have morale.

That said, I really do like the idea of having scales affect production. But 8 turns? That'll be brutal.

[Zeldor]

It would be 9 for C'tis biggest fort Gold reduction or defense/admin increase for forts would be nice.

[SlipperyJim]

Production is more important early in the game than late in the game, I agree. But that doesn't mean it's underpowered. An early-game advantage can easily snowball into a late-game advantage by allowing you to expand faster than your opponents.

Anyway, the main point here is that mundane troops become less and less useful as the game progresses. But that's always been true since Dom:PPP ... it's just a part of the game.

[DrPraetorious]

As with Drain, I'd suggest a staggered scale:

Prod-3 - -2 turns to build forts, fort cost -30%
Prod-2 - -1 turn to build forts, fort cost -20%
Prod-1 - -1 turn to build forts, fort cost -10%
Sloth-1 - +1 turn to build forts, fort cost +10%
Sloth-2 - +1 turn to build forts, fort cost +20%
SLoth-3 - +2 turns to build forts, fort cost +30%

This would, at the very least, discourage people from taking Sloth-3 and get them to take Sloth-2 instead.

It would make Sloth-1 and Prod-2 very rare/undesirable choices, as with Drain, which bothers some people but not me.

[Twan]

SlipperyJim said:
Production is more important early in the game than late in the game, I agree. But that doesn't mean it's underpowered. An early-game advantage can easily snowball into a late-game advantage by allowing you to expand faster than your opponents.

Yes but with the 120 points for constr 3 you can take an awake SC pretender instead of a dormant god, and it snowballs as well.

Personnally I don't use sloth 3 all the time but even with ressource heavy nations rarely takes more than prod 1.

Another idea (simple as the code is there) : actually only growth/death affect population, when most other factors (except magic) are affected by 2 or more scales, even if one is more powerful (ex : supplies by temperature and g/d, income by all, etc...). Let's say production now gives +/- 0,1 population in addition to actual bonuses, it would make it a good pick to reduce the death effect or attain maximal growth, and would give an endgame interest to production (production... of childs ).

ps : the fort idea is better, but harder to implement I think

[Zeldor]

DrPraetorious:

I think that even only cost reduction would be nice. But then it should include temples and labs.