[Torgon]

Originally Posted by Nightfall

The difference between recruiting a patrol unit for 1 mage turn and 1 mage is, actually, very far off from being the same thing.

I stand by my original conclusion, recruiting one extra forester and perpetually patrolling (20%-30%) in the capital is a close call, you could go either way; trying to do it everywhere is a bad idea.

I did make one mistake in that post, in forgetting that man got a forester for free, which makes it more viable. I still think it's a mistake with G3 though; by turn 50 your capital is worth about 660 a turn under the original scales if you don't overtax.

Note that turn 50 is usually about the point that your upkeep starts to get close to your income if your doing well and you have neutral scales.

I agree. Trying to do it everywhere is not viable. But I stand by the assertion that you probably can get a few more than one forester out, and if you have them you might as well overtax your high pop provinces to get the income boost.

As I said before MA Man is not quite as castle ready as LA Man but they're moving in that direction, and putting up a slightly higher number than the average nation is far from worthless. Especially in CBM 1.92 where your wardens and lord wardens become recruit anywhere. With large number of high strength stealthy troops + large numbers of stealthy nature mages + normal units with a castle defense bonus + relatively high defense cheap castles you can exert a lot of control over the landscape. And as long as you're putting a few extra castles up, you might as well churn out a forester or two.

The G3 point is somewhat irrelevant to whether you overtax or not. Whether its O3G3 or O3P3 or just O3 the math doesn't work out to be wildly different. The more positive scales you have the better overtaxing is, but its hardly useless even with neutral scales. The G is not really about income its more about keeping your crones healthy, and without it they tend to get diseased WAY too often. I've lost far too many precious E2, W2, A4 or N5 crones to disease, and loosing one of them is a pretty huge blow.

As to what your capitals worth by turn 50, I'd rather sink my capital to get more gold now thus enabling me to grab someone else's capital. MA Man is not exactly a late game powerhouse (somewhat better with CBM but still not great), and unless you're expanding early your probably not going to fare well. I'd rather do everything I can to front load my income and expansion, thus overtaxing where you can.