Productive Scale needs some Enhancements

[Twan]

SlipperyJim said:
Production is more important early in the game than late in the game, I agree. But that doesn't mean it's underpowered. An early-game advantage can easily snowball into a late-game advantage by allowing you to expand faster than your opponents.

Yes but with the 120 points for constr 3 you can take an awake SC pretender instead of a dormant god, and it snowballs as well.

Personnally I don't use sloth 3 all the time but even with ressource heavy nations rarely takes more than prod 1.

Another idea (simple as the code is there) : actually only growth/death affect population, when most other factors (except magic) are affected by 2 or more scales, even if one is more powerful (ex : supplies by temperature and g/d, income by all, etc...). Let's say production now gives +/- 0,1 population in addition to actual bonuses, it would make it a good pick to reduce the death effect or attain maximal growth, and would give an endgame interest to production (production... of childs ).

ps : the fort idea is better, but harder to implement I think

[Zeldor]

DrPraetorious:

I think that even only cost reduction would be nice. But then it should include temples and labs.

[BesucherXia]

I think some new methods "exchanging" resources into gems can help a lot, since gems are definitely more valuable than gold in later game.
Like a special spell or command to force labors asssiting mages searching gems: the more productive, the more chance to collect extra gems later.

This can also be great trait for some limited nations (ulm be the first in my mind). As someone like me finds LA of too less content, why not employ some ideas alike to expand it (means new nations & new strategy)?

[Micah]

One issue with the fort idea is that it's dominion dependent, so high-production nations with low dominion scores could have to go to a good deal of trouble to get their dominion in place to build an expansion fort, while bless-nations can avoid the sloth penalty the same way. Only Awe-based SCs with sloth are likely to feel the effects of the change, since they tend to have a ton of dominion spread. It would be nice for production to matter more beyond the first 10 turns though.

[CUnknown]

I don't think we need Productivity to be competitive with Order. It is okay, imo, for some scales to be better than the others, it's just that the disparity in this case is a little extreme. Especially in the late game. As in, Productivity is a worthless waste of points once you reach endgame, and Order to recruit and maintain mages is very valuable.

So, a nice little benefit like decreased castle construction time and/or cost would go a long way to removing the problem here, I think.

[Reverend Zombie]

What if the pretender-point cost for prod/sloth were decreased, and its benefits kept the same?

[zlefin]

how about having some magic sites that allow recruitment of units made entirely out of resources? some sort of mechanical constructs or so. that way gold as a limiting factor wouldn't be an issue. pure upside for having production scales. at least if you find one of the sites.

what about putting in siege weapons to the game? like catapults and stuff, with very heavy resource costs.
just soem more ideas.

[zlefin]

would increasing the resource %/level from 15 to something like 20, or 30 help at all?

I haven't gotten to late game MP to hvae experience, so i cna only hypothesize here.

Part of the issue is that mages and summons get better per cost over the game, but troops never do (aside from improved buff spells). Though i can't think of any good way in the code to make better troops available with research.

Are you guys pondering without any mods, or sometimes considering how it plays with conceptual balance mod?

cuz alot of the very heavy armor units suffer major defense and mobility penalties for it. and cutting down on those may make the production moer useful late game. or is it just that castle proliferation provides enough resources.

Have you tested how useful prod scales are if you adjust the base resource value so resources are simply less common?

i'll see if i can come up with any other ideas.

[DrPraetorious]

Points cost for individual scales cannot be modded; I believe we've been told that this is not going to change.

The prod/scale level of sloth is already so high that if you raised it, sloth-3 would become unviable for any nation that even uses its troops. A nation with sloth-3 already has half the army of a nation with no sloth - making this penalty bigger just discourages people from fielding heavy infantry.

This would have the undesirable effect of making a choice unviable (which is not good), and also of encouraging strategies where you don't use troops at all, or don't use heavy infantry.

It would be nice if the positive productivity scales were bigger than the negative sloth scales.

[DrPraetorious]

Cost reduction would be nice, no question.

But would that *ever* be enough to get you to take Productivity instead of order? I kinda doubt it, with rare exceptions - LA or EA Ermor, Abysia with some strats, it'd make Productivity worth considering as Pangaea, although still not worth it.

The key, I think, rather than nerfing Order, is to give positive scales a synergistic benefit.

So the population increase from Growth is multiplicative with the money bonus from Order. There are a set of really cool events that require Order - making Order/Fortune worth considering. If Productivity made forts faster to build, that would be very multiplicative with order and with order+growth, as you could then usefully spend all that cash you were raking in. If they're just cheaper or more expensive, you'd tend to take Order/Sloth since you have the money to afford the forts anyway.