The Growth Scale

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by WraithLord

So now on turn >60 someone dropped a few armeggedons. Your population dies. But you still have your research and gems and territories. And by turn 60 you will be much less income dependent. And less so with every passing turn.

You're also (under 3G) somewhat likely to even have a little disposable income after a couple of Armageddons, whereas most other people will already be solidly in deficit. Sure if they do 5-6 you'll certainly be in the hole as well - but your population will still be proportionately higher, providing more supplies for your existing troops, and allowing more robust Blood hunting in the aftermath.

[cleveland]

Originally Posted by WraithLord

Nothing can take away gains that you already made due to growth...

Except that one of those Armageddons picked off your pretender because you had to choose some crappy 10hp Master Druid or something.

Meanwhile, your neighbor that took Death-2 and invested his 200 design points in a proper Turn 1 Super Combatant still has his 7-star demigod, who laughs menacingly from atop the Hall of Fame, accompanied by his Artifact-clad SC cohorts...Artifacts afforded through mages hired from the half-dozen capitals he single-handedly captured before your Druid stopped hitting the snooze-bar...or ripped from the bodies of his foes.

Uses for the extra 200 gold/month your post-Apocalyptic populace is contributing:
1) Hurl it against the invincible hide of the Future Pantokrator.
2) Bullet purchase.
2) Gun rental.

[OmikronWarrior]

Originally Posted by cleveland

Except that one of those Armageddons picked off your pretender because you had to choose some crappy 10hp Master Druid or something.

Meanwhile, your neighbor that took Death-2 and invested his 200 design points in a proper Turn 1 Super Combatant still has his 7-star demigod, who laughs menacingly from atop the Hall of Fame, accompanied by his Artifact-clad SC cohorts...Artifacts afforded through mages hired from the half-dozen capitals he single-handedly captured before your Druid stopped hitting the snooze-bar...or ripped from the bodies of his foes.

Uses for the extra 200 gold/month your post-Apocalyptic populace is contributing:
1) Hurl it against the invincible hide of the Future Pantokrator.
2) Bullet purchase.
2) Gun rental.

I have to disagree with your priorities here Cleveland. SC's are vulnerable to numerous spells and counters: Frozen Heart, Soul Slay, Stellar Casscades, anti-thug with AN weapon, etc. Growth and high gem income (enabled by a rainbow pretender) give a boomer the tools to handle an SC rusher quite handily.

Basically, armies proper > SCs > armies w/o support.

By midgame, using mages to spam elemental damage spells does more damage per turn than anything an SC can come up with.

[Tolkien]

It really depends on the situation, doesn't it? If a nation is in desperate need of gold to fund an early expansion and to put up fortresses fast, Order would be a better choice in the short-run. If your nation doesn't need gold for expansion or doesn't have a need to build fortresses (*cough* MA Oceania *cough*), growth is more beneficial in the long run.

That being said, O3/G3 would give you the best result overall. But, you're going to have to look for the design points, after all.

[Fate]

FYI, the numbers you have for growth are compounded continuously (Dominions *should* compound on a per-turn basis, I believe). I ran up the numbers on a spread sheet (non-continuous and with 11 months in the first year) and here they are (a little less dramatic):
+Growth or -Death

      |  3   |  2   |  1   |  -1  |  -2  |  -3 |
Spring|30000 |30000 |30000 |30000 |30000 |30000|
Year 1|32036 |31340 |30662 |29342 |28700 |28075|
Year 2|34415 |32870 |31400 |28640 |27347 |26113|
Year 3|36970 |34478 |32156 |27953 |26057 |24288|
Year 4|39715 |36164 |32930 |27284 |24828 |22590|
Year 5|42664 |37932 |33723 |26630 |23656 |21011|

The point is still the same, double population after 5 years.

Now, as for Patrol & tax. According to the manual (which seems to be accurate here) every 3% above 100 results in -0.01% population directly. Every 5% results in 1 point of unrest. Each point of unrest eliminated by patrolling kills 10 population. So we get:

-0.01% per 3%
AND
-10(flat) per 5%

So at 110:
-0.03% (or -0.04%?) and another -20

At 120:
-0.06% (or -0.07%?) and another -40

At 130:
-0.1% and another -60

As is clear from this, only 110 can be sustained indefinitely at growth 3 (and, in my tests, still results in a small growth!). 120 seems to result in a slow decline, and 130 is a little faster decline (about -0.4% or less).

Disregarding the unrest (which has less effect the larger the province), here is the comparative total income in a province with 30000 population, full growth and no other scales, with the various tax rates (assuming adequate patrolling but discounting the cost):

100  |110  |120  |130  |
3937 |4261 |4572 |4847 |

So, depending on how cheaply an "adequate patrol" can be obtained (otherwise the ramping unrest will quickly kill your profits), any of these may be useful. Of course, Order would help with all of this, but it would help in an equal percentage so I think it is a moot point.

As an interesting side note, Temp3 (either will do), Order3, Growth 3 yield interesting results here:

-5% overall supply, +0.6% population, and +12% tax income. Combined with 110 (123.2% total) or 120 (134.4% total) and cheap patrolling the results can exceed order3.

[AdmiralZhao]

I would disagree with Cleveland about purchasing a bullet, since it seems more efficient to just rent one. The rest of his statement seems accurate though.

The 120 points that you spent on growth can go a long way towards the purchase of a shiny new SC pretender. This will let you take an extra province per turn, greatly increasing your first year's growth (e.g. taking 2 provinces on turn 2 instead of 1, taking 4 provinces on turn 8 instead of 3, taking 5 provinces on turn 12 instead of 4). Besides being invaluable in early wars, a well managed SC is going to grow your empire at a lot more than 0.6% per turn, and that early growth can then be leveraged into all sorts of new opportunities. I think it was KissBlade who said that in most games the winner is decided by turn 20. While I don't think that is entirely right, I do think that by turn 20 you certainly know who is not going to win. You need early expansion if you are going to be competitive in the mid-late game, as even a high growth, high gem income nation with 20 provinces won't be able to compete with a high death, low gem income nation with 60 provinces.

I would also point out that in the early game, when I am evaluating who to attack, growth scales are a great indicator of who is stocking away points for late game efficiency at the expense of their early game survivability.

[licker]

Well there are gambits to be had here apparently...

High growth does not in any way preclude SC type pretenders, even awake ones, even with decent other scales (of course this is entirely nation dependent).

As is always true for dominions, there is more than one way to skin a cat.

[WraithLord]

OW took the words out of my mouth

And I want to add on licker's observation.

SCs do not contradict G3. You can take a 4S or pathless Wyrm and make it a fine SC with or w/o G3.

SCs have their uses but IMHO they are mostly orthogonal to the G3 vs. D3 decision.

I still think G3 is better when you have a long term plan on a big map. In case you have a death dom nation or playing a small map or planning for a strong rush that won't end until complete victory then by all means take D3. Just don't be too surprised you won't be to most popular guy on the block b/c if you have death dominion and if you are rushing and leading the score graphs (which is your ideal with D3) you will be hard pressed to find friends.
OtoH a G3 peaceful nation would have that much more income and research that could jump it much faster to endgame research.

So when you make the G/D choice you better have a well thought of game plan

[Sombre]

I don't think a death 3 dominion is going to make diplomacy any harder than a growth one. It just isn't much of a factor. It isn't like you're Ermor or Rlyeh or anything, it will at most mean some lost pop on your borders.

[licker]

The point wasn't so much about taking death in and of itself, it was about how most nations need to play when they take death, which is to paint a gigantic bullseye on their ***