Productive Scale needs some Enhancements

[HotNifeThruButr]

As far as I can tell, the problem is that

A. Gold/research is always a suitable substitute for resources. The effect is about the same if you, for example, took a handful of resource-heavy Hastati out of your army and put in a gold-heavy Hydra or took a handful of armored soldiers out for a mage that can hurl fireballs/summon monsters.

B. Gold/research has uses beyond the function of resources, which it can already substitute for. You can build fortresses with gold and researched summons are powerful enough to make all troops look like chaff.

From a theoretical point of the view, the only way to fix the scale problem, then, would be to make it so resources has a unique function. This can be done with modding, by manipulating the spell book and the units that may be recruited.

If summoned monsters were less powerful, the "early game" would be effectively extended, since troops would be useful for longer, though this wouldn't make it go on forever, since summons, as a rule, get more powerful while troops do not. The same goes for modding troops to be more powerful.

But those are inelegant solutions that do not solve the problem, only applies shoddy bandaids to it. I would prefer it if Resources were given a whole different function to fulfill that is unique to it and can't be subsituted by gold or research.

What if Resources were directly used to build fortifications instead of or along with money? Perhaps you pay your cash for a castle, but to physically construct it and presumably to arm it with your national weapons, you need resources taken from the province?

Perhaps labs and temples cost resources along with gold?

Perhaps there is some sort of building, maybe an Arsenal that only consumes resources? Perhaps it had a useful and desirable function?

[Sombre]

Turmoil - Luck is more attractive when running something like Worthy Heroes 1.8, which makes Hero units well worth having. But it isn't a major factor I guess.

I went with turmoil 3 luck 3 in a recent game using pythium MA and did very well - I got virtually all good events about gems, gold and items, while qm got bad events + freespawn events with the same build using Pangaea (for the screaming women).

[vfb]

LA Ulm has 3 nice heroes even without the WH mod, I'll take Luck-3 with them just to get a shot at snagging the Blood Marshal.

[CUnknown]

Yeah, you would never take Turmoil without Luck. That would pretty much be suicide. But taking Sloth without ... what? is perfectly viable and is just about no problem whatsoever, especially in the late game.

Taking Turmoil, more than any other negative scale imo, requires that you do x, y, or z to be viable. Taking Sloth requires you to do not a whole lot of anything to be viable.

I would never take Turmoil for the purposes of a double-bless. Just take a single 9 bless and throw in a 4 and keep your cash money. I almost can't imagine a situation where that wouldn't be better, unless you were planning on Turmoil/Luck anyway. And in that case you pretty much bought Turmoil to pay for Luck, not for your bless. But of course this is just my opinion.

I disagree that Sloth shouldn't be made worse. It should hurt you as much as any other negative scale, as much as Misfortune-3 (which can be a killer), Drain-3 (no research sucks), Turmoil-3 (we already went over that one), etc.

Sloth shouldn't be made any worse than Productivity is made better, though.

[Wokeye]

HotNifeThruButr said:
I would prefer it if Resources were given a whole different function to fulfill that is unique to it and can't be subsituted by gold or research.

What about increased weapon/armour stats for troops, thus making regular troops 'upgradeable'? This way they'd be more useful in the midgame too?

What about training for troops? Using a general's turn + resources to give experience to lesser troops?