Please advise: can misfortune change on its own?

[The Panther]

Base Ulm is the only nation who should take a drain scale, and they should always take drain 3. This is due to the fact that the master smith, which is its only mage, is immune to any drain scale. The 240 extra pretender points for Ulm with drain 3 compared to all other nations with magic 3 is quite nice. Of course, Ulm is a weak nation, so this hardly matters. But other than Ulm, magic 2 or 3 is a NoB.

And, other than Ermor, all good players seem to pick order 3, as that is the best positive scale all around. It gives great income to provide for the inevitable mad castling. Sloth 3 is almost automatic for all races, even high resource nations like Ulm.

As bad as it is, though, I doubt there will be balanced scales until Dom 3.

In my standard pretender design for pretty most races, I pick:
Order 3
Sloth 3
Misfortune 2
Magic 3

Which costs only 40 design points. I then mess around with heat/cold and growth/death to balance whatever magic schools and dominion I can afford.

[PDF]

Panther,
I'm not sure Sloth-3 is that good a bet : the lowering in resources early, certainly slows initial expansion - except against very weak indies.
The penalty also exist for all the game regarding Capitol-only units, so if you want to produce Temple Guards, Wardens, etc .. your rate will be only 4/5 of a "normal" rate with prod-0.
Personnally I rather take prod-0 or +1 (with "heavy" nations)and pays for it with Death-1.

Order-3/Misf-2 is a near-standard, but Turm-2 Luck-3 is a refreshing and fun change - you get piles of gold and gems falling from the skies ...

[Arralen]

I only play with "very difficult" research these days. Gives a healthy timeframe where national -buyable- units are useful.

And productivity really shines with that setup

[The Panther]

You know, Arralen, that sounds like a refreshing idea there! Very hard research sounds like a fun time for sure. I think Ulm would be a pretty decent race under those circumstances.

I expect that you would almost have to ban Caelum, though, as I have found that Caelum (probably more so than any other race) is almost unpunished by very hard research. With it's significantly underpriced mages that can be built anywhere, Caelum mages can get quickness and lightning bolts so very fast regardless of any settings. The only real penalty for Caelum is the long delay to the air queens.

I would like to try a game where productivity actually matters for once!

[Cohen]

In my Mod I changed something about scales.
Here scales change:

Growth now make pop growing/dying at double rate (0.4%) and +/- 3% gold at point.
Productivity is +/- 20% resources at point, and +/- 4% gold.
Fortune is now 10% chances of event (instead of 5%). Still 10% modifier from good/bad even.

My aim is to make them more useful if you pay for them, and less exploitable if you want to take design points.
My Balance Mod is still under work however.