refuting common wisdom on scales everybody knows

[Baalz]

I thought I’d take a moment to refute some of the conventional wisdom that everybody knows. Let me preface this by making it clear that I’m in no way saying that the conventional wisdom is always wrong, just that it’s not always right.

Gold is king. You’re foolish if you don’t take order-3 with almost any nation, and turmoil is practically unplayable competitively. This is not true. Gold is a means, not an end. It is often the case that making other choices will allow you to spend less gold on expanding at the same rate. Production allows you to use more heavily armored troops, so you can use less of them. Taking an awake pretender allows you to use less troops for expansion. Taking a better bless allows you to split your sacreds into smaller armies for more rapid expansion. All of these can very well end you with a stronger position than if you took in more gold but also spent more gold. Order/turmoil scale is a balancing act which must be planned for in the context of your nation and your strategy for optimal return.

Expansion is queen to gold’s king. In order to have a competitive build you must be able to expand very rapidly. If you can’t grab about 20 provinces by the end of the first year you need to go back to the drawing board. False. Provinces are a means, not an end. Namely, provinces are a way to get more gold and gems. Of course, all other things being equal the more provinces you can get the better, but you must consider the opportunity cost. The first obvious one is that scales are often sacrificed to optimize expansion. A swing from order-3, prod-3, growth -3 (+ 39% income) to turmoil-3, sloth-3, death -3 (-39% income) means you have to expand more than twice as fast merely to break even. This is an extreme example to illustrate the point, but the concept holds on any smaller variation – every tick down in your scales is more you have to work just to break even for gold. In addition, extra provinces have a downside - you’ve got more area to defend, more money dumped into PD, more upkeep in troops to defend it, and of course more troops and casualties to conquer it in the first place.

This is another consideration that most people don’t consider, the opportunity cost of dumping gold into troops as fast as you can to fuel a fast expansion. If you stop and think about it, it is often a stronger position to have 12 provinces with 3 castles than 24 provinces with just your capital castle at the end of year one. With extra labs, mages & research, triple the troop production (even without accounting for production scale differences) and superior defensive options you stand a very good chance of clobbering the guy who’s grabbing provinces as fast as he can (and probably making enemies along the way). At some point, obviously, it’s a good idea to devote resources to things other than expansion. This point can be quite a bit earlier than many people realize.

Sloth is almost always great dumping grounds to get design points. False. As I illustrate above production can often lead to more economic power than order whether from more efficient use of your troops or faster expansion. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that triple the troops (-45% to +45% resources) can often translate into double the gold income which trounces the 30% swing in income from order-3/sloth-3 to turmoil-3/production-3. Again, the same is true in smaller increments.

Misfortune is almost always a good dumping grounds to get design points. False. Luck offers a number of advantages which many overlook in paying homage to the “gold is King” myth. True, order will give you more gold over time than luck even accounting for rebuilding burned down labs & temples (though of course your missing lab also cost you research points and possibly strategic spell casting). I believe that it’s a mistake to measure the benefit of luck in terms of gold. One big advantage of luck is greater magic diversity through random gems, indie mages joining you, and national heroes. How do you put a gold value on getting a mage plus gems to start site searching in a new path? Also, the fact that order will give you more gold in the long run does not capture the advantage of gaining 1000 gold in the first couple turns when every coin counts the most. Finally, I think the detriment of random indie attacks are not really factored in by most people. If you’re on the ball and have some spare capacity they are no more than a gold-costing nuisance. In a tight fight though they are often the tipping point, effectively acting with your enemy to attack you and fortify what you lost. Misfortune scales are very common, and I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen people screwed over by indie attacks while another player is attacking them and they have no way to retake the lost provinces in any reasonable amount of time.

Drain is for suckers, never take it competitively. Well heck, just look at the numbers, what percentage change in research will the mage you plan to do most of your researching with have? If you plan on researching with Sauromancers (10 rp), drain 2 only subtracts 10% of your research…so you could put those design points into 2 levels of order to gain 14% more income and theoretically 14% more mages. Again, it all depends on how everything fits together.

[llamabeast]

Awesome post Baalz.

[MaxWilson]

My favorite way of looking at both order and blesses is that they are modifiers to the cost of troops. A 25% gold bonus is approximately the same as making troops 20% cheaper, and a bless is like modifying the base stats of a unit. In other words, sacrificing Order-3 to afford an F4 bless for Agartha is like buying Ancient Ones that cost 21% more but have Attack 11 instead of 9. (In this case it also makes it clear that most of Agartha's sacred troops are still tactically terrible for the price--they're like Jotunheim's normal troops but cold-blooded.) It doesn't quite work that way in practice because Order-3 doesn't give you a 21% boost throughout your whole empire, and you won't always be blessed perfectly (and you have to spend on priests to do the blessing), but it's a useful model.

I think the key reason why I prefer gold to resources is upkeep. My playstyle rarely maxes out resource usage at all my castles except in the early game, so Prod feels like an early-game optimization for me when I'm all about having a strategy for the late-game. (Even though, oddly enough, I rarely play out the late game and endgame because I'm winning by that point.)

Edit: good point, Aezeal, gold buys more castles. So in a sense, Order buys Prod.

-Max

[Aezeal]

I agree on it all, but in the end gold is usually needed and a limiting factor when building castles and high end mages (or just lots of mages). Late game you'll want cash to buy mages.. and more cash = more mages and also you'll be able to pay more upkeep while still having some cash to spare.

[Ironhawk]

GOLD IS KING

All who betray this truth follow a false pretender god!

[MaxWilson]

Baalz,

The one thing that troubles me about your post is that your refutations all have the sound of knocking down straw men. "Never take drain, always take Order-3, always take Sloth-3." I think the conventional wisdom is that most things do have niches, and to the extent that Production, Drain, etc. are looked down on it is because the niche is small.

To take a specific example: Ashdod is my current flavor of the month, and the first thing I said when I looked at it was, "Whoa, if anybody ever needed a Prod scale, Ashdod does. 88-resource sacreds??? 50-resource Archers?" In actual practice Prod did not seem to be worth its points. In the early game, expansion works fine with sacreds even if you're using Sloth (+ human slingers if desired). Later on, I find supply problems much more of a problem than resource constraints, even if I'm playing with Sloth. Low Prod simply means that I have to plan my wars a few more turns in advance (building for 4 turns instead of 2) and/or use slightly cheaper troops, but once a campaign is in progress it's mostly limited by other factors. You could give me Prod-infinity and I still probably wouldn't pay 240 points for it, given how tight my point budgets tend to be. It would speed up early game expansion by a factor of 1.5 or 2 at most, and it would make it easier to pump gold onto the front lines in the form of troops in the midgame. (Well, I guess Prod-infinity would also give me +infinity to gold, and I'd pay points for THAT.)

So far I haven't played a nation that could really benefit from Prod scales, although there are a couple that should probably stick with Prod-0. (Ashdod may be one of these.)

-Max

P.S. I don't look down on Drain though, actually. I think 80 points for Drain-2 is potentially quite a good deal for certain nations/builds.

[Baalz]

Ah yes, in some situations order can indeed buy production, but in others production 'buys' gold. Sometimes your capital only troops are much better than what you can get at other castles, so you use less of them, so you spend less gold and have less upkeep. Sometimes (as I mentioned before) you can get heavy infantry instead of medium saving gold and upkeep. Sometimes your initial expansion (before you can get up additional castles) is much faster, gaining you more income than order would have gotten you.

You're missing my point in pointing out that you can buy production by spending gold...everybody knows gold can buy production which is why gold is king. My point is to remember that production can also 'buy' gold and sometimes that is the more efficient way to go.

[DonCorazon]

I have been a big fan of luck to make money over order. Order takes a while to get rolling – it also depends on what types of provinces you are in. Surrounded by wasteland or mountains – enjoy that +20% on a 12 income province (assuming your dominion has even gotten ramped up). I know people will point to tests and algorithms that show order is better. But as a finance guy, I am all about the time value of money and hitting a lucky trade fair that adds +1000 gold early on, or gets you a free hero/mage (think +8 RP in the first turn over 60 turns is ~ 500RP) is well worth it. Not too mention the gems, which are invaluable in the late game and often the only way to get a diverse gem income ramped up.

As for Drain, I have not had any luck taking Drain scales yet, but am hoping to find a way to make them work.

Not a big Production fan either, probably due to my innate love of Sloth.

[sector24]

I feel like the balance in a lot of games is heavily swayed by a single pivotal event, like finding Mount Chaining, or getting a great indy mage that diversifies you into 1 or more new paths. Getting a national hero like Baba Yaga or Angrboda on the 2nd turn is just so amazing, which is why I like luck.

[quantum_mechani]

Many of your points are valid- lots of gold without a good outlet doesn't do much good, taking sloth is not the best option for some nations, drain is useful mine when you need points - but I absolutely cannot agree that order 3 is not optimal in all but the most unusual of situations. While it's true it is possible to find yourself in a situation without a good gold outlet, that is very rare. Almost all nations can channel gold to immediate and significant effect- either buying the better mages that can boost research and provide an ace in the hole in battle magic, or simply worthwhile troops (this applies even for nations that benefit from prod- they benefit even more if they can afford more heavy troops). And as other have pointed out, even when supposing you have sufficient gold for your mages and troops of choice, building forts with gold is an almost universally worthwhile application.

This is not to say you cannot be quite successful with turmoil 3, with any nation. Obviously the gold available to each nation can vary a great deal, regardless of scales, but that in no way implies that stacking the deck against yourself is a good idea. The bottom line as I see it is that order is such an all purposely useful scale, that realistically there are very few things you could sacrifice those points for a better return.