Re: Wishing for snatch?
 

The Chalice is not an overpriced ring of regeneration. Very few people are likely to go galavanting around the countryside carrying it. It will mostlikely spend turns circulating amongst various forts and strongholds, where it will be almost uncapturable because: A) It will be difficult for enemies to locate the chalice before it gets spirited away to some other diseased tartarian B) the player with the chalice may not lose in a well defended province C) The mage with it may sruvive D) The commander with it may die to well crafted assassin plans, but the assassin might subsequently be killed.

Wish is highly overrated. The best wish by far, if you have 100 pearls a turn, or an alteration site, is gems. Abominations, Ehter Gates and 1000 gem nexuses are also possibly better uses of the pearls. I agree that clam hording is somewhat imba, especially for patala, who also get hammers, but wish isn't a major factor in that.

Re: Wishing for clam snatch
 

You can have a clam income of 100 a turn on a large(not mega map) by turn 60.

Re: Wishing for clam snatch
 

My point is even if the Chalice is on a race's pretender, you can take his capital and kill his pretender. If he does not want to defend his capital with his best mages and troops and artifacts-that is his business.

Re: Wishing for clam snatch
 

NO! On the turn before you storm, he puts the chalice back into the lab, or if he forged the chalice himself, uses his astral magic to teleport out.

Re: Wishing for clam snatch
 

Then you take all of his castles and labs.

I mean if you are not playing an astral race, that is your only option anyway. Why should astral races, some of the most powerful mp races anyway, get an easier path to grabbing the chalice than say MA Ulm?

Re: Wishing for clam snatch
 

There is some themetic problems with gem producing items. If in the world of dominions anyone could create these items, woudn't the world get so overpopulated with these gems that everything except astral and fire becomes irrelevant? As it is, it seems that the world naturally produces gems at a steady rate, which keeps a balance. Magical energy seems to come from somewhere. Where does it continuously come from for these items. Shouldn't they have to suck life out of the surrounding coutry side, or something equivant, in order to get the needed energy to create the pearls?

Re: Wishing for clam snatch
 

I agree with Xietor on this. Astral magic is dominating enough. It is not fair to also give it the power to steal items and summons that are the special strengths of other paths.

Re: Wishing for clam snatch
 

I only play in large game (usually full of nations for that age) and clam whordeing is almost always done by the winner(s). I'm sure it's completely ridiculous in the megagame as well. I wouldn't be surprised if LA R'lyeh and EA Oceana (each who have natural mages with the paths to forge calms) don't already have at least 75-100 clams up and running and it's only around turn 65. You usually can't compete in the late game of large games unless you invest in a clam, fever, or stone factory.

Gem producing items do not scale well. I have no problem with them in shorter games though.

And there have been complaints in quite a few MP threads and here in the forums (quite a few - do a seach).

Re: Wishing for clam snatch
 

Ok, you play large games. Isn't that a bit like complaining about the fact that Ulm sucks in the late game. If you reqularily play on maps wiht 500+ provinces, balance changes enourmously. I don't think that's the most common form of game here though.

As for complaints, I just searched the forums, and I found, uhhh, two threads on it, and assorted mentions in the MP and AAR category. Of course, there are a huge number of incidental hits. The two threads, I should note, were on a clam-related bug and the worth of empowering to forge clams. Not a huge complaint about balance. I'll try and start a poll, if I can figure the code out, to find out how unbalancing people think they are.

Re: Wishing for clam snatch
 

I cannot understand how someone may at the same time suggest that killing the
Chalice holder is a plausible way of getting it, and have a problem with clams.
I have never, ever lost the Chalice to anything but a wish, and I very seldom
get it any other way, either. Clams on the other hand, I have looted, lost,
ravaged with remote spells, etc...

As for clams being unbalanced, I'm not quite sure where I stand. I would prefer
if the chance of a clam popping a pearl was something like

NumberOfProvincesOnMap / (5 * NumberOfClamsInGame) rounded down to 1

This way, the clam income will never be too much of the total gem income, and
a player who didn't clam early will be able to weaken his enemies' clams.

But I do not dare hope that the developers will want to put time in this. I have
also found out that I do not enjoy big games at all, so I do not care much.
Anyone starting a game on a map bigger than 150-200 provinces is asking for
a late game that is in many ways out of whack.