refuting common wisdom on scales everybody knows

[Baalz]

Whew, sorry if this post is all over the place, but I wanted to responnd to points made by several different people.

@Saxon: Assuming for a second that order and production are mutually exclusive, production gives you more flexibility than order. Take my C'tis example, the high production guy not only has more gold but can easily switch to recruiting slave warriors if the situation merits it- or elite warriors more likely (yeah production!). True, he'll burn a larger percentage of available gold in that situation, but this is a flexibility that the order player doesn't have, the option to field heavy infantry even when his opponent starts massing longbows.

@QM & Micah: Yes, a good part of my argument is that order & production are usually mutually exclusive because of the way stuff works out. Certainly there are exceptions, but often you're choosing an awake pretender, strong bless or rainbow, which leaves you fairly limited design points. Magic, growth and temperature scales are largely dictated by your nation. This leaves a tug of war between order, production & luck. It's all fine and well to get order and production, but in practice this usually means you won't have an awake pretender or some other significant consideration. Sometimes production is better than order. Sometimes an awake pretender is better than order. Sometimes a high magic scale is better than order. My point is that though order is often the most efficient use of design points, there are also often other competitive choices to make.

Twan: The fact most everyone does it is a specious argument. I personally have won a couple games and done quite well in several more using "non-standard" scales. Several people in this thread have said similar things.

Drain is a bit more difficult to play, but I think it's viable in more situations than most people realize. You've got to look at the percentage hit to your research and how those design points otherwise effect you. If magic-1 to drain-2 only hits your research by 20% and it allows you to expand more than 20% faster, or perhaps get order-3 and production-3 thus boosting your income by more than 20% then it makes sense. Also, skull mentors & lightless lanterns can be reasonable ways to leverage a drain scale in some situations.

I disagree, I think luck is often much better than order in the early game. Obviously this is going to vary a bit, but between the extra gold, extra casltes, extra labs, etc. I often find luck will give you more gold value than order in the first year. Order pulls ahead in the long run, but it's hard to put a value on a big wad of extra gold in the first couple turns.

[Sombre]

Baalz said:
Twan: The fact most everyone does it is a specious argument. I personally have won a couple games and done quite well in several more using "non-standard" scales. Several people in this thread have said similar things.

Therefore 'I have done well with it and so have a few other people' is an equally specious argument, if not worse. After all for every player that has won or done well using nonstandard scales, there will be more who have won or done well using standard scales. You can't have it both ways.

[Xietor]

To see if anyone is really wants to try and make a rock hard argument, let me hear someone make a case for taking turmoil and misfortune!

[Sombre]

I did hear someone claiming turmoil was good because if you get invaded barbarians will attack the invader since he lacks luck scale, probably.

But the same is true of order misfortune - if you invade you lose the benefit of order and keep the nasty misfortune.

[Folket]

Turmoil/misfortune is the only scales I take. So superior to death/misfortune.

[llamabeast]

Sombre said:

Therefore 'I have done well with it and so have a few other people' is an equally specious argument, if not worse. After all for every player that has won or done well using nonstandard scales, there will be more who have won or done well using standard scales. You can't have it both ways.

I think there's a bit of logical fallacy or something going on there. Being as most people play with a certain set of scales, the observation that most victories occur with that set of scales is indeed uninformative/misleading. By contrast, the fact that Baalz has won games with unusual scales does show that it is possible to do well with such scales, which is the point he was making.

[Radio_Star]

This is speculative on my part, but I'd imagine that you could leverage strong 'undesirable' scales diplomatically, forestalling an invasion by convincing a potential opponent to choose a more profitable target.

[CUnknown]

Baalz, I agree with you on most points. However, production/sloth is pretty clearly the weakest scale and the best bet to sell off for points, imo. It's the only scale that is pretty much obsolete towards the mid-late game. I mean, I take prod-3 as Ulm, but for most other races I'd probably take somewhere slothy, if not all the way to sloth-3.

It's not that prod is never useful, or that sloth will never hurt you, but in general there are better ways to spend your points than prod and no better ways to get points than sloth.

Edit: Oh, I also wanted to say that I agree with you 100% about Drain, it's a great scale to take for points, imo. Not only does it help to protect against Mind Hunts, but it only subtracts 1 research (in base game) and gives you 80 points! 1 research is really not a big deal, although it may make some cheap sacred researchers no longer worth it.

In CB mod, it's not quite as worth it.

[Baalz]

CUnknown said:
Baalz, I agree with you on most points. However, production/sloth is pretty clearly the weakest scale and the best bet to sell off for points, imo. It's the only scale that is pretty much obsolete towards the mid-late game. I mean, I take prod-3 as Ulm, but for most other races I'd probably take somewhere slothy, if not all the way to sloth-3.

It's not that prod is never useful, or that sloth will never hurt you, but in general there are better ways to spend your points than prod and no better ways to get points than sloth.

This is exactly what I'm talking about, most everybody "always" takes order and "never" takes production despite the fact that this is suboptimal in several situations and a judgment call in several more. Obviously there are situations where order/sloth makes sense. There are other situations where production/turmoil will give you more gold in hand than taking order - I give an example with C'tis but you don't have too think too hard for more. More gold and a faster expansion. Yes, obviously the usefulness of production declines over time but that argument hardly stops most people from taking awake pretenders - those design points are completely wasted by the end of year one.

[Omnirizon]

how come everyone is stuck on (over)analysing order/turmoil and luck/misfortune?

what about heat/cold scales?

3 cold can fund 3 order with a net return in gold, and you have a great built in defense against C'tis and Hydras. The only reason I see never to take 3 cold is if I need to maximize gold income and can't afford to lose it on the cold scale, or if I'm playing a nation with cold-bloods I plan to use. You can also take 3 cold 3 order and 1 growth and have a small net gain on gold, but also get the long term gain of growth, and help alleviate the supply reduction of cold (if that is a problem, typically it is not). Lastly, consider that random fluctuations in the temp scale will often put your provinces at 2 or even 1 cold, helping to remove that gold penatly. However, you can never fluctuate above the cold 3 you already have. Thus there is an actual increase in return for taking cold 3 (ei. the points you get from taking it are worth more than the penalty, relative to when you take only cold 1 or 2, becuase the cold 3 cannot fluctuate any higher, whereas cold 1 and 2 will often fluctuate up to 3.)