The Growth Scale

[Dragar]

Old age considerations and maintaining provs at >5k while blood hunting aside, I think growth scales are really a subjective trade-off between current and future gain. Can you grow fast enough from the extra points to justify a death scale? Are you confident of surviving long enough for growth 3 to pay off? It's just personal preference

Personally I like taking growth one quite often, for the old age benefit and because I just hate to see my income base declining - but I know that's a psychological comfort rather than a real advantage, as I am paying for it in design points and could probably be further ahead with another scale in order, luck or production.

Certainly one thing I've learnt is that if you take death 3 you'd better be primed to expand quickly, or you will fall behind.

[chrispedersen]

Also, Abysia suffers a *little* less from death scales.

[Renojustin]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Also, Abysia suffers a *little* less from death scales.

Why?

[Tolkien]

National trait: just like how MA Ulm isn't affected by the Drain scale.

That being said, you still generally don't want death on Abysia.

[Dragar]

EA and MA abysia don’t suffer the income penalty for death, the population suffers as everyone else. LA cop it all

[Tolkien]

Yep. Income and supplies won't decrease. The problem is, they're a blood nation, need high resources for their armies, and their mages suffer from a severe lack of youth. That being said, Growth is kind of necessary with Abysia.

[cleveland]

A nation with a Growth scale is kinda like a turkey.

Things are really great for a while...your armies are fat and your treasury is happy. Maybe you coughed up too many design points to fly, but heh, life's good, right?

Then someone drops a couple Thanksgiving Armageddons on your ***.

Edit: You censored ***? Really? What if it's used properly, like: The cart was hauled by the ***.

Edit2: I'll be damned.

Edit3: What?!?

[Illuminated One]

Has someone compared Growth with Order already?

The main point is that Growth based income bonus grows exponentially while Order stays the same.
So with CBM and assuming that the province has the scales all the time a province with Growth 3 should break even with a province with Order 3 on about turn 18.
100.6% ^ 18 * 109% = 121% (vs 121% gold income from O3)
On turn 37 the province should have generated more gold over the whole game than an order 3 province. That's hardly the point where gold gets useless or someone drops several Armageddons (and after that O3 is useless as well).

Also if you spread your dom into provinces you can't take already (knights, elephants) growth benefits you but order won't.

So I'd say if you want to take luck and need money G3Lx isn't a bad choice instead of OxLx.

[Tolkien]

It really depends on the situation, doesn't it? If a nation is in desperate need of gold to fund an early expansion and to put up fortresses fast, Order would be a better choice in the short-run. If your nation doesn't need gold for expansion or doesn't have a need to build fortresses (*cough* MA Oceania *cough*), growth is more beneficial in the long run.

That being said, O3/G3 would give you the best result overall. But, you're going to have to look for the design points, after all.

[Fate]

FYI, the numbers you have for growth are compounded continuously (Dominions *should* compound on a per-turn basis, I believe). I ran up the numbers on a spread sheet (non-continuous and with 11 months in the first year) and here they are (a little less dramatic):
+Growth or -Death

      |  3   |  2   |  1   |  -1  |  -2  |  -3 |
Spring|30000 |30000 |30000 |30000 |30000 |30000|
Year 1|32036 |31340 |30662 |29342 |28700 |28075|
Year 2|34415 |32870 |31400 |28640 |27347 |26113|
Year 3|36970 |34478 |32156 |27953 |26057 |24288|
Year 4|39715 |36164 |32930 |27284 |24828 |22590|
Year 5|42664 |37932 |33723 |26630 |23656 |21011|

The point is still the same, double population after 5 years.

Now, as for Patrol & tax. According to the manual (which seems to be accurate here) every 3% above 100 results in -0.01% population directly. Every 5% results in 1 point of unrest. Each point of unrest eliminated by patrolling kills 10 population. So we get:

-0.01% per 3%
AND
-10(flat) per 5%

So at 110:
-0.03% (or -0.04%?) and another -20

At 120:
-0.06% (or -0.07%?) and another -40

At 130:
-0.1% and another -60

As is clear from this, only 110 can be sustained indefinitely at growth 3 (and, in my tests, still results in a small growth!). 120 seems to result in a slow decline, and 130 is a little faster decline (about -0.4% or less).

Disregarding the unrest (which has less effect the larger the province), here is the comparative total income in a province with 30000 population, full growth and no other scales, with the various tax rates (assuming adequate patrolling but discounting the cost):

100  |110  |120  |130  |
3937 |4261 |4572 |4847 |

So, depending on how cheaply an "adequate patrol" can be obtained (otherwise the ramping unrest will quickly kill your profits), any of these may be useful. Of course, Order would help with all of this, but it would help in an equal percentage so I think it is a moot point.

As an interesting side note, Temp3 (either will do), Order3, Growth 3 yield interesting results here:

-5% overall supply, +0.6% population, and +12% tax income. Combined with 110 (123.2% total) or 120 (134.4% total) and cheap patrolling the results can exceed order3.