Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ah yes, the Skratti are blood-2, water-2 aren't they. I think Mictlan's Rain Priest does it too. But that adds weight to my argument.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">But you also agreed that maintenance wasn't a major issue. We're looking for factors that are not just relevant, but will make the difference between choosing a clam-hoarding strategy and not. Forger maintenance is not such an issue.

Add to this the fact that 2 gem types are required for nature-1,water-1 clams meaning that, in the case of R'lyeh and Atlantis for example, a nature gem supply must be found, and the pretender is probably the only unit that can find it.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">So then, which of those reasons have I not addressed?

Re: The next patch
 

I just wondered whether it would be possible to play games with stronger gods? Maybe a map slider you can use to vary the points each player gets to spend on god creation between 400 - 600 points or even more, just like the point bonus given to difficult AI.
What do you think about this?

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually, this isn't a bad idea.

Re: The next patch
 

There's actually a lot of nature-gem producing sites underwater, found with water and earth. For an atlantian pretender, finding a nature gem supply is an issue solved by turn 5 to 10. Unless the magic site frequency is set to abysmally low.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Untrue. I haven't played Atlantis or R'lyeh, but I often advance into the oceans (when they aren't being played). Even without searching, there's a lot of Kelp Forest nature sites in the oceans - in some games it's seemed like one in three aquatic provinces had one.

So, imo - the nature provinces would be easy to find for Atlantis or R'lyeh.

(I'm neutral on the Clam issue - haven't been in a game yet where they were 'abused'. It does seem like they should be in a "lesser artifact" class - limitted in quantities, perhaps each nation could have one or two. Like the magic salt mill that turned the oceans salty, things that produce things from nothing shouldn't be common.)

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually, this isn't a bad idea. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes, good idea. It would address some qualms some people had about "I can never have enough points to try out X strategy".

As for the clams, how about this idea:

The clams generate astral pearls from the astral aether of the world, which there is only so much of each month. The clams of the world draw from this pool, at most one per month, but when there are more clams than the pool, only some of the clams grow pearls that month. Say the pool is 30 pearls per month. Someone could forge 30 clams, but would only get 30 pearls if no one else forged any. If other nations forged a total of 60 clams, they would get about 2/3 of the world's 30 pearls, and the 30-clam nation would get 1/3 (about 10 pearls). The 30-pearl pool could be more or less, and/or something that can be set in the map, an option, or perhaps best: based on the number of provinces in the map. Maybe it should simply be equal to the number of salt water provinces on the map! That would make good sense, set a nice low limit, and result in clams being a good investment at first, but not once people start over-producing clams.

PvK

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana"> <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes they are, plus one random pick.


<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No, it doesn't. It just adds weight to the argument that current situation where clams cost 10 watergems has to be changed, and this is something that both of us agree about.


<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana"> <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No, I never said that. I said that this is not "the most important factor" to claim issue, however it doesn't mean that clam-forgers cost and maintenance should not be seriolsly considered when looking into the big picture.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think you seriously underestimate this fact Zapmeister. Here is some simple math:

Let's say you got amazon province on turn 5 - not unrealistic at all, especially if you are sending your scouts to check all nearby forests, as I always do. Let's say this is your only amazon province in the game, for the sake of the argument.

Now you can easely start producing 1 priestess per turn and do it every turn for as long as you own province (remeber, they cost only 100gp each and they are sacred). That means by the turn 40 (mid game) you have 35 nature1 water1 priestesses. That means, that if you have enough gem supplies (look at Peter's tables below) you can forge 35 clams every turn by now. And that's without any use of national mages.


Now let's say you clams still require water 2 as they do now, and you have to rely on your national mages to produce them. Take Skattis for axample, who are 250gp not-sacred mage, which is pretty average price as far as national mages go.


Now let's say you start producing them for the purpose of clam forging on turn 5 (as in previous example), and produce them every turn for 35 turns, until turn 40.

That's 35 national mages. their hiring cost would be 5250 gp more than the cost of 35 amazon priestesses. (250gp-150gp)x35. That's _a lot_ of money - you could build 12 Castles for it or 500 heavy infantry soldiers, et cetera. But that's not all. Using linear progression sum formula we can calculate maintanence cost for 35 mages up to turn 40. It is 10500 GP. The total maintance cost for the 35 amazon priestesses(from 1 to 35 on turn 40 from same example above) would be 2100 GP. The difference between our two cases in maintenance is (10500 - 2100)= 8400GP. So, together with difference in hiring costs (5250 GP) we are looking at total 13650GP (!) difference.

That's how much money the clam hording player will save from just one amazon province, if the calms would be made 5N and 5W, as you suggested. Now if you think that this would make clams less atractive, I suggest you to think again. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif


Now the reason why I've said that this is not the most important factor, is that there is another factor which is even more crytical to the clam abusing issue. That is the basic fact that any mechanism that allows you total return your gem invesments in few turns (anywhere from 5 to 7, or 10 in the worst case scenario, depending on availability of dwarven hammers and if you have found the forging bonus site). Half of the Posts below is discussing thus, so I am not going to repeat these arguments. Read Peter's Posts for example, if you want to see more numbers related to this topic.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Like this idea. Probably needs some ironing but sounds good and feasable.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There's no way that you will have built 700 clams by turn 35, which is what is required if you want to build 35 clams per turn. To get to 100 clams, you never need more than 5-7 mages, and that's only for the very Last turns of the progression.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That's probably right, and I've said in my post that you'll use them for clam forging only as much as you have gems for them. But you would stlll likely to build 1 priestess each turn, if for no other reason than because they are such great and cheap reseachers, much better than almost all national mages, save few nations. (from cost/efficence point of view). So you just use whanever priestess are not forging clams for your reseach. And later, when your clam production will be catching up, you'll be switching more priestess to forging, leaving rest at reseach. At some point not too down the road (but later than turn 40, agreed) your claim production is bound to outrun your pristess production, since clams grow is geometrical and priestess can only be recruited one per turn. Than you'll have to start using your national ones, but up until than your pristess will take care of all your forging for you. However at that time you'll have such a massive gem income, than game is likely to be won anyway. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif


You have to remeber that the discussion with Zap started that with him saying that since R'leh, and other nations have 2 water national mages available, than changing clams to nature 5 water 5 would solve clam-hording problem. I disagreed, saying that it would not, and in fact could be counterproductive in some cases. So you are actually adding weight to my argument, that priestesses, who could be relatively easy recruited from forest provinces with minimal luck and some scouting, will be more than enough to handle all your clams forging for you up to mid game at least, and at reduced cost.

[ April 05, 2004, 20:44: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]