Productive Scale needs some Enhancements

[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.

[BesucherXia]

I think some new methods "exchanging" resources into gems can help a lot, since gems are definitely more valuable than gold in later game.
Like a special spell or command to force labors asssiting mages searching gems: the more productive, the more chance to collect extra gems later.

This can also be great trait for some limited nations (ulm be the first in my mind). As someone like me finds LA of too less content, why not employ some ideas alike to expand it (means new nations & new strategy)?

[Micah]

One issue with the fort idea is that it's dominion dependent, so high-production nations with low dominion scores could have to go to a good deal of trouble to get their dominion in place to build an expansion fort, while bless-nations can avoid the sloth penalty the same way. Only Awe-based SCs with sloth are likely to feel the effects of the change, since they tend to have a ton of dominion spread. It would be nice for production to matter more beyond the first 10 turns though.

[DrPraetorious]

Cost reduction would be nice, no question.

But would that *ever* be enough to get you to take Productivity instead of order? I kinda doubt it, with rare exceptions - LA or EA Ermor, Abysia with some strats, it'd make Productivity worth considering as Pangaea, although still not worth it.

The key, I think, rather than nerfing Order, is to give positive scales a synergistic benefit.

So the population increase from Growth is multiplicative with the money bonus from Order. There are a set of really cool events that require Order - making Order/Fortune worth considering. If Productivity made forts faster to build, that would be very multiplicative with order and with order+growth, as you could then usefully spend all that cash you were raking in. If they're just cheaper or more expensive, you'd tend to take Order/Sloth since you have the money to afford the forts anyway.