Scales bugs in Dom3.14

[Nikolai]

It's also very bad for Cold/Hot nations. I think we need patch ASAP. Balancing as feature, maybe later. But early effect is murder to many, many players - temperature nations, heavy ressource nations, growth builds, misfirtune builds. The late effect is murder on anyone with non-awe dominion and good scales.

Simple patch next week would rejoyce me, for sure.

On the other hand, it has become a game of 'Dominions' indeed. Great news for LA Mictlan bless rushers, for example.

Zeldor: temples building not possible until later in game, and will not help on borders, where your neighbor is building/preaching too. You will both have strong dominion, and you will both have wrong scales.

Foodstamp: it seems to happen always. If developers REALLY made scales average on neighbors, early capital will always have weak good scales.

[Velusion]

On the other hand, it has become a game of 'Dominions' indeed. Great news for LA Mictlan bless rushers, for example.

LA Ermor is boosted by this as well.

[Edi]

The problem is that we have gotten used to the early, broken mechanics that were caused by the neighbor issue and geotable corruption. It may well be that the current way the feature works is how it is supposed to work, but we don't know for sure. This particular thing had survived all the way from Dominions PPP, or from whatever point it was introduced and nobody has had experience with the current setup prior to 3.14.

Therefore it is not a given that it will be easy to curtail this effect quickly. I'm sure IW will take a serious look at it, but this may take some time. In the meanwhile we're going to have to live with it. I for one am glad the scales bug in its original form is gone. This is a whole different ball game.

[Zeldor]

Edi:

If neighbours had to affect scale they would affect all of them, not order and prod. So it is surely not WAD.

[Velusion]

Zeldor said:
Edi:

If neighbours had to affect scale they would affect all of them, not order and prod. So it is surely not WAD.

Agreed.

And why, on turn 1, would it show the "correct" scales only to have them drop\disappear on turn 2?

[Edi]

True. It is not good the way it is now, but whether it can be quickly fixed is another matter.

Funny thing is that I just have a game going with Kaljamaha where he plays LA Pythium and I play Arco. I have an imprisoned nataraja with no magic at all, Dominion 7 and nearly all scales maxed out. O2, P3, C/H 0, G2, L3, M3. And it hasn't hit me yet, despite not having dominion in all neighboring provinces for a while. Conversely, Kaljamaha's Pythium had all of its scales wiped out right off the bat and there was no difference as such in his situation.

So to some degree this issue is arbitrary, but what causes it to behave the way it does is up in the air. It's possible that if each type of scale increase/decrease due to dominion trying to push them in the direction of the pretender is handled separately (which I would expect), then it may be something different in the way order, production and growth are checked. If not, then it's going to be something esoteric. We may or may not learn more after Johan takes a good look at this thread, depending on whether he chooses to make any public statements here or in the beta group.

I know this issue is aggravating, but right now the only thing I can counsel is patience. Making too much hay of it right now or turning shrill is NOT going to help and can only have a detrimental effect.

[vfb]

Velusion said:

Agreed.

And why, on turn 1, would it show the "correct" scales only to have them drop\disappear on turn 2?

Yes, if this is by design, then all the scales in the home province should start at zero, and grow towards the player scales. This would still be a bit of an order nerf, since the effect of luck doesn't kick in until you get a few more provinces anyway.

The way it's implemented now is just weird, with full scales for just the first month, and then they vanish. (Except for luck and magic, which seem totally unaffected.)

[Reay]

Yes, I have now got dominion in all provinces surrounding my capital and my order scales are going back up again.

Also my high dominion provinces which are surrounded by provinces with my dominion tend to have order 3. The ones on the edges of my dominion have 0-2 order.

I guess for now we will have to build more temples.

[Lingchih]

I haven't noticed it yet. But then, I always play with a high dominion.