[Immaculate]

I recently wrote this is the Shared AAR experience thread (link).

Originally Posted by Immaculate

So, by this point I had tested some other arco builds, being very dissastified with the rate of expansion. I conclude that the sloth build for arco may have been viable in earlier version of the game but that the rate of income modification from the production scale is too great and impoverishes the player. Also, it greatly limits he rate of initial growth by limiting the number of troops one can hire. The strength is supposed to be that you save money by researching with philosophers instead of oreids or mystics but I would counter that with a production build you will make a lot more money because you will control way more provinces. The other end of this is that philosophers are old and you lose the research edge with nothing to show for it but dead philosophers; they cannot cast spells. If you choose to do your early research with mystics or oreids, then you can use them in battle… and you don’t lose them to old age.

All in all, I am very dissatisfied with my build but then again, I knew that it would be difficult to expand without an awake pretender and decided to proceed with it anyway. That was a mistake. If I were to do a sloth build again I would have taken an awake pretender. But more importantly, I would have taken a production build. I would be glad to hear someone argue the opposite point but that’s how I felt at this point in the game… and still do.