Re: Yet another Clamhoarding, Castling Discussion
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think the idea behind clams was to ease micromanagement for Astral mages. Atlantis' Kings of the Deep have two _linked_ randoms, they are always of the same path! And Nature, Fire, Earth and Air are components in some multipath Water spells that are hard to get access to. Acid spells, Fire Ward and Claymen, Bone Melter and Freezing mist. The Last is not exceptional, but can cause heavies to rout.

Nature has nice items that won't win you a game, but maybe a battle or two here and there. And you get a booster to three, and an access to Foul Vapors with it.
Death lets you get up to 4 without artifacts or empowerment, and you can get Revenants to forge Skull Mentors easily if you have gems for it.
Earth lets you forge Boots (to EEE), then Dwarven Hammer.
Fire has the basic set plus Runesmasher and in the artifacts Ember. No booster, though.
Water 5 is not useful at forging, nor in summons. But can I say Murdering Winter?

And Blood could be useful too, if you got it early and had land province or two to hunt from... You would still have to catch slaves for both the Ice Devil (Frost Fiends are nice, but not worth it for a nation without national blood mages) and empowerement to Blood-3.


Even leaving the blood out as useless, 5/8 is nice. This was without considering items/spells that Atlantis has access to without randoms (W3/S3) and for which one random would be enough.
With the cheapest items all paths except Blood would look even better. Kings are expensive, and that's about their only weakness. In the long run, Atlantis is frighteningly versatile.

Now that I have written this, clams seem truly frightening in the hands of Atlantis as they would allow Atlantis to empower Kings. E/F for Fever Fetishes, D/F for fire booster and evil Banefire spells, S/F for Astral Fires... I will have to give it a try! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Quote:

Last question : can you cast flames from afar on underseaprovinces ?

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Probably not.


corrected "propably"

[ July 02, 2004, 16:50: Message edited by: Endoperez ]

Re: Yet another Clamhoarding, Castling Discussion
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No Fire spells work underwater except for the ones that specifically mention it. No Flames from Afar, no Fires from the Sky. There is less need for a Dome on underwater hoarding.

Re: Yet another Clamhoarding, Castling Discussion
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oh man that was good beats right there...

Re: Yet another Clamhoarding, Castling Discussion
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't think it was particularly beats. It's just a statement of fact. If a methodical, analytical "Win or Die trying" player plays with those who do not play to "Win by any means" players who do not have a highly developed strategy or set of tactics, guess who will win consistantly? If anything Norfleet should feel complimented that he can deal out an adequate enough amount of punishment with enough variety of nations to have that status. Unfortunately he has the playground bully mentality where the 4th Grader beats on the Kindergardener.

I believe his response would be "In Soviet Russia, Kindergardener beats you!"

[ July 02, 2004, 17:04: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Yet another Clamhoarding, Castling Discussion
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Probably not.


corrected "propably" [/QB]</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">hm didn't know that cause i used an archmage atlantian who summoned then the fitting mages instead + used the cheaper W3 mages http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
i'll try them out immediately http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
if left alone long enough it seems to me that atlantis is the most powerful nation then http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
are there any other "massdesctruction" rituals like flames from afar which can target underwater provinces ?

if not you could "hoard" your mages all in one province and use some patrolling with a huge almost unbeatable guard against teleported/gatewayed in raiders ?

you could mass produce fever fetishes then too and wipe out huge amounts of item carriers with flames from afar while the enemy cannot http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif


are abominations easy to defeat ?
because they are astral 4 / water 2 + amphibians so no need for wather breathing items and so on http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
since you will have some seers which got 2 astral you can easily empower them and then with your heavenly astral income summon some of them / turn http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
or what are other good high end amphip summons ?

finally another question :
somewhere in the manual stands : if the army only consists of commanders the army will rout as soon as the first commander dies .

got this corrected in one of the patches ?
or do you have to give one of your commanders troops in oder to prevent them routing when you want to fight with an army of 10,20 ... empowered commanders ?

what are good troops where you only need a few in order to prevent the commanders from routing ?

Re: Yet another Clamhoarding, Castling Discussion
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I would agree that castling should not be forbidden.
However I would say it's more realistic for the developers to create provinces which can't have castles built. In my opinion it should be impossible to build castles in swamp territories and even some shore-line territorities just because realistically they wouldn't Last.

Re: Yet another Clamhoarding, Castling Discussion
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Reminds me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Lancelot's Quest.

Re: Yet another Clamhoarding, Castling Discussion
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There's an amusing one. Have a random event in which castles burn down, fall over, and then sink into the swamp!

Re: Yet another Clamhoarding, Castling Discussion
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hey, these people are volunteers! It's more like a 4th grader who offers to fight multiple kindergardners that volunteer for the attempt. I don't go stomping into newbie games to beat up on newbies: I only join the "regular" games. You can't blame me for this one. I'm perfectly open to playing somebody who's good and not an Illwinter stool pigeon. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hey, no fair stealing my schtick.

Re: Yet another Clamhoarding, Castling Discussion
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There's an amusing one. Have a random event in which castles burn down, fall over, and then sink into the swamp! </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Even better, wasn't everyone saying, the other day, that water needed more good rituals to throw gems at ? Sounds like a good one to me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

- Kel

Re: Yet another Clamhoarding, Castling Discussion
 

Sounds like a good water spell... but provinces with mountains should be immune to the spell. If that is too powerful then perhaps make the spell where it can only target shore-line and swamp territories.

Re: Yet another Clamhoarding, Castling Discussion
 

It needs to involve fire as well. Otherwise the castle can't burn down at the same time it falls over. Also, the third one stays up.

Re: Yet another Clamhoarding, Castling Discussion
 

Sinkhole - WWWWW
Alteration 6
Cost: 25W
Remove fortification from any shoreline or swamp province.

- Kel

Re: Yet another Clamhoarding, Castling Discussion
 

I have even better idea - the lvl 9 Global Enchantment "Bane of Mad Castler". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

(or more thematically "Sickness of the Stones" )

After being casted it randomly destroys 1-5 castles each turn of the player who currently have the highest castles/province ratio in the game during this particualar turn. It disappear by itself when there is noone left with more than 50% of his provinces castled. Any attmpt to dispel it from the player who is currently affected by it will only make it stronger.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif


EDIT: Actually it was only intended as a joke, but now that I think about it, I think that perhaps the idea has merit. Either that, or the idea to make temples burnable only by the special order of enemy commander instead of being burned automatically as it is now, or just aditinal rule that would prohibit building of new castle for the nation, that already have more 50% of its provinces castled. (game message: "Your nation is stragling to support the numerios castles it already has, no more can be build at this time")

I think implementation of any of these proposals in the future patches by developers, either just one or some combination of these, could solve the problem with cheezy madcastling "strategy", once and for all, or at least reduce it to the tolerable levels.

[ July 04, 2004, 22:43: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]