Quick Poll: Is the production scale weak?

[Chris_Byler]

One other possibility is just to play with a lower resource multiplier. Sloth hurts worse and productivity is less likely to be excess, for everyone. (Except nations that *really* never need resources, like Yomi or LA Ermor. But it's thematic for them to have sloth anyway.)

I think the most fundamental problem is the obsolescence of troops, and therefore resources, in the later game, while gold is good for everything, all the time, at all stages of the game. Tougher research combined with lower base resource production and a high indy strength (high enough to endanger awake SC-pretenders that try to solo provinces unequipped, and to force almost everyone to have some losses that need regular reinforcement) could make sloth's slower starts really dangerous. The resulting game would have the emphasis shifted away from late-game SC and spell combo strats toward early expansion and getting the most out of troops and low-level spells, though, which some players might not like.

Or, of course, you could just make troops cheaper or mages more expensive in gold; the fact that IW didn't do that along with changing the base resource/supply amounts is largely (IMO) responsible for the fact that troops vs. mages decisions haven't shifted as much since Dom I/II as you might otherwise expect. You *can* make many more troops now, but it's still not necessarily a good idea compared to using Dom 3's more abundant gold to simply make even more mages.