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 ]

Re: The next patch
 

At the moment, 4 nations have national mages that can forge clams. If they were nature-1,water-1, no-one would have national mages that could do it, but if jade amazons (not any old amazon will do) are found, then it can be done on a much lower maintenance bill.

At that point, I'm done with this topic. I fear, because there's been so much disagreement, that there's no hope of getting any fix at all. I was plugging for a smaller fix mostly because I thought it was the only proposal that had any chance of getting past the devs.

I guess we're gonna have to learn to live with clam-hoarders http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Better check your themes before you start on with the 'noone' bit... then again who plays Miasma anyway? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Still this seems like a problem that is better addressed by the players (like using house rules?) than addressed by some kind of nerf. I fall firmly in the 'who cares' camp on this one http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well most of the disageement recently (on the Last page at lest) come from the issue what would be the best solution for the clam hoarding, but the posters in general tend to agree that the problem exist and require fixing. Personaly despite my personal opinion on this matter I would be very happy with practically any solution endorsed by developers, as long as it would make massive clam hoarding less attractive as it is now. Even if it wouldn't go as far as it as I would wanted it to, any step in right direction is much better than no steps.

Unfortunatly since I haven't seen any developers posting in this thread their opinion, and considering the fact that they are quite active on this forum in general, I can't help but think that they have already considered the matter and dicided that they are indiffernt toward this whole clam thing. But they don't want to post it since they know that some people feel strongly about clams, and being nice guys that they are they don't want to hurt other people feelings. That's pure specualtion on my part of course, since I can't speak for the developers. But if it is so than it is quite sad. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">They've already posted to this thread.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">They've already posted to this thread. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You mean "Five bucks to the one who kills the hoarders http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif " line 6 pages ago?

[ April 06, 2004, 03:55: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Not much, but enough to show that they think that this is a non-issue.

Re: The next patch
 

If clams are really that good, just raise them to Water 3. Doubling the up-front cost halves the return on investment, and in addition, it's harder for most nations to obtain the mages that can forge them (water bracelet is Con6).

However, there's another issue that I think is being overlooked. Graeme has said several times that "there is nothing else to do with your water gems besides forge clams" (or words to that effect) and therefore you are not hurting your military power by using water gems for clam forging.

In the opinion of the DomII playing community, is this statement correct? And if so, isn't THAT the real problem? Water was too weak in Dom I - everyone agreed on that. Is it still too weak? And if so, shouldn't it be strengthened?

On the battlefield: maybe water needs a new battlefield spell that would be as scary as Nether Darts or Orb Lightning? Are Falling Frost, Frozen Heart and Ice Strike not up to par? Or is the general idea of loading a mage with gems to use combat spells not worthwhile in a competitive environment? What about Water Elementals? They cost gems now (like all Dom2 elementals), but are still pretty effective for a modest gem cost. Do they need to be improved?

Rituals: Winter Wolves not measuring up? How about doubling the gem cost and number of wolves summoned (thus requiring fewer mages for the same wolf output)? Or how about a new water summon? Giant turtles perhaps (amphibious, size 6, very high protection, high strength bite attack)? Yetis (high hp, strength, size 3, moderate protection, cold resistant, claws+bite, you get a nice sized pack with each summon)? I think the change in seasonals was intended to move the game away from massing ethereal summons. But there's no reason that corporeal summons can't be strong and cheap enough to make a nice supplement to a conventional army.

Some have already suggested a ritual that makes all troops in a given province amphibious (either for a limited time, or permanently). Or how about a one-province Version of Thetis Blessing (spending extra gems to set the duration like Astral Window)? These could help water nations bring their aquatic troops onto land, or help a land nation invade the ocean.

Items: Water has some pretty good items already. One of the better low level weapons, Boots of Quickness, Water Bracelet, Rime Hauberk, Bottle of Living Water and of course the subject of this thread, Clam of Pearls.

Passive ability: Every path of magic gives its mages some ability. Nature gives supply, fire gives leadership and attack, earth gives protection, death gives fear and undead leadership, etc. Water gives water breathing to the mage and ONE unit per level of water magic. This is, frankly, pathetic, especially on a path that is already among the weakest in most other areas. Instead, why not let a water mage bring ALL his troops underwater? Most mages have low leadership anyway, but the few who have good leadership (or +leadership items) can lead whole armies underwater. Or at least raise it to 5-10 troops (or 10 total size of troops) per level of water magic. One unit per level is horrible, even if the unit is a Crusher or similar expensive summon (of a non-water path, I don't see any water unit that would be worth bringing).

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This seems to me to be a major problem. As far as I can see (and I'm FAAAAR from an expert) there are 4 major uses for water:

1) Water breathing
2) Quickness ("Boots of" or the spell)
3) Clam of Pearls
4) Kill your own mages (Breath of Winter, and yes I'm still bitter)

Do people use water for anything else?

The kill your own mages one influences me to keep water mages out of battles unless I feel like micromanaging their position on the battlefield and who guards them and where the rest of the army...screw it, just have him forge something! Nothing I need right now? Just make some clams and don't kill anybody!

I guess I do summon Sea Trolls, and I have one in the Hall of Fame mostly due to falling frost. Of course when there is no enemy in range he proceeds to cast Breath of Winter thereby ensuring he can kill some of my people to stay in the HoF (I've taken care of the troops finally, but I'm still bitter...)


<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It seems to be pretty weak if you ask me.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Falling frost seems to be enough to get a commander into the HoF. And he's in a squad with titans, so that's not too shabby.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Kinda like that idea. I like Yetis too.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have to agree here. When I first found out that "bring some friends along" meant 1 per unit of magic my first thought was "useless" and I proceeded to plan on making items and completely ignoring any water magic on a mage for purposes of taking troops into water. Why not have it like nature: 5 people per level? Then that could actually be used, but a level 6 water mage (twice the level of "master" in the game) can take a whopping SIX people into the water? Wow. If you use any type of army this is negligible.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ice Devils are often a good reason to put water on your pretender.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Cleary an exaggeration IMHO. There are definitely usefull things to do with water gems, and not using them does have a cost. Sea Trolls, Water Queens, Frost Blades, Quickness boots, Quickening, Frozen Heart, and Murdering Winter are all effective. The contention that Murdering Winter isn't usefull borders on ludicrious IMHO.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I definitely agree that water is the weakest path, although not by so much as I used to think.

I like the ideas you have for improving it, especially the new summons and passive abilities. Another way would be to lower the casting level of some existing spells, as one of the things really hampering water is the lack of usefull lower levels spells.

Re: The next patch
 

[quote]Originally posted by Jasper:
Sea Trolls, Water Queens, Frost Blades, Quickness boots, Quickening, Frozen Heart, and Murdering Winter are all effective.

Sea trolls have a gold upkeep that will ruin your economy if you try and make a good sized army of them. Frozen heart is nice, but not useful at all against a sixth of the enemies you will face. Water elementals are also probably the weakest of the lot in a normal temperature dominion.

Quote:

[QB]The contention that Murdering Winter isn't usefull borders on ludicrious IMHO.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Murdering winter is not particularly useful. It requires you to cast several wolven winters in the same turn to do enough damage to kill even normal troops, and in a heat dominion this gets even worse. In heat 2 it will routinely only kill 10 troops out of over a hundred. It is also completely useless against Caelum, Jotunheim and Ermor.

Re: The next patch
 

Why do the magic paths need to be balanced? If water is seen to be weaker than the others, that doesn't mean it won't get used. If your national mages have water, and you get water gems, you'll obviously use them for one of the uses that have been listed in this thread.

The problem arises if one of those uses (clams) is clearly better than the others, and leads to an arguably straightforward, difficult-to-stop winning strategy (clams -> astrals -> wishes).

I believe that this is the case (let's not argue it again) and while I would prefer the nature-1,water-1 solution because I think it would supply the necessary balance, and keep the item on a par with fever fetishes cost-wise, I would also be happy with the water-3 solution.

The main hurdle at this point, though, is that there's no consensus that clams are broken. Jasper, Wendigo and the devs constitute a powerful lobby, by anyone's reckoning.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You're right, geometric is definitely the right word, not exponential. However, conquest growth is every bit as geometric as clam investment: just as you can reinvest a clam's astrals into clams, so can you reinvest conquered gold income into conquest. True, there is a ceiling for returns from conquest, but as this comes when you've conquered the _entire_ map IMHO it can be safely ignored.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Simple: spending your gems on water summons is effective, and not doing so will give you a weaker army. Researching Construction right off is a very real cost as well, as typically other paths are more usefull for expansion. Similarily, Astral gems have uses better than losing half of them to alchemy in order to make more Astrals in the distant future.

Also, in my experience Murdering Winter is quite effective; one can always find or make a cold dominion in which to use it. Domes are a very limited defense against it, and aren't limited to clam hoarders anyway.

Honestly, I've tried the Clam strategy, and found it just too slow -- even on a fairly small scale, when I defintely had use for Astrals and had no immediate use for Water gems. I would have done better if I had saved them and either forged Frost Blades or summoned Sea Trolls/Water Queens.

Yes, Clams kick *** if you can count on everyone leaving you peacefully alone for 40 turns, and nobody else conquering much. I haven't yet seen this happen in Dominions, but I have seen games that were effectively decided by 40 turns.

The biggest advantage I see from Clams is that they let you have some secret growth (assuming statistics turned off) without the diplomatic problems that can come with conquest. They're also a good deal if you're planning to transmute water gems to astrals anyway.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You're the first person I've heard say this, although I've heard quite a few chime in (although not I) thinking Murdering Winter is broken... IMHO the burden clearly rests on your shoulders to show that Murdering Winter is weak. Your argument above rests on exactly the wrong context to use Murdering Winter, and so isn't very convincing.

Whether it works in heat 2 or not is moot, as even if it were only usefull in one's own cold dominion it would still be powerfull. Domes offer limited protection because they're not mobile, and in practice heat dominion similarily isn't a practical defense. And this is without taking into account that one can indeed enforce cold dominion with Wolven Winter (which is usefull in it's own right), or the tactic of blowing through domes with cheap rituals.

[ April 06, 2004, 07:03: Message edited by: Jasper ]

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It's true that all the paths don't need to be balanced, as you could balance nations with water magic in other ways (e.g. I wouldn't call Atlantis, R'lyeh, or Caelum weak).

However, IMHO the game would be more enjoyable if they were more balanced. I also think it wouldn't take much change to make water more interesting at lower levels of research, and so this would be an easy way to improve the game. As it stands the only reason I can see to take water on anything other than a Rainbow pretender is for the nice Water 9 blessing.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I take water 2-3 on my combat pretenders quite often.

Re: The next patch
 

Water is great on pretenders for:

1) Quickness, one of the best combat spells in the game

2) To mix with blood for easy access to ice devils.

Breath of winter is really good for taking independents too.

If you're going to be doing any fighting with your pretender, a few points in water is never a waste.

Re: The next patch
 

I used to do that a bit as well, but found I got better battle results out of Fire, Earth, Air, or Astral. Mostly because Water's main benefit to a combat pretender is quickness, which can be easily received from Quickness Boots. Being able to go underwater is nice too (unless R'lyeh, Atlantis, or Ermor or playing), but this too is available through Construction.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Many pretenders haven't the required appendages to put boots on.

For battle magic, my own Favorites paths are Water, Earth, Death. With Air and Nature as outsiders.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Many pretenders haven't the required appendages to put boots on.

For battle magic, my own Favorites paths are Water, Earth, Death. With Air and Nature as outsiders. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I like air, especailly air 2 - I often take it of my SC pretenders. Mistform+mirror is quite efficint combo.

[ April 06, 2004, 10:32: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I honestly fail to see the difference between "geometric" and "exponential" in this context. They're exactly the same: a constant amount of additional resources (time, or gems, or whatever) brings a constant multiplier to the total value.

Here, the growth is exponential (or geometric) with respect to time, because each 20 clams (or 14, if you have the Dwarven Hammers) generate enough gems each turn to make one more clam: your clam number, just from the clam output, will double every 15-16 turns.

I just computed progression lists, both assuming no normal gem input:

If you start on turn 0 with 20 clams, no gems, and convert each 20 pearls into one clam, you can start turn 16 with 40 clams and 39 pearls; you will need a second forger for the first time on turn 8.

If you start turn 0 with 14 clams, no gems, and a hammer, you will start turn 12 with 28 clams and 34 pearls, assuming you have the second hammer by turn 7. By turn 16, you will have 36 clams and 46 pearls, now needing a third hammer and forger.

Of course, the need for gold (upkeep and cost of recruiting the forgers and clam-bearers) will increase at the same speed. You can alchemize your pearls to pay for it, but it will significantly slow down your doubling rate.

I don't know how efficient this really is; I've never tried very hard to make it work.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Not much, but enough to show that they think that this is a non-issue. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No, it is not a non-issue.

As shown in this thread there is no consensus on the clam matter. Some people have a problem, some don't.

I havn't decided my own opinion yet.

My brother came up with the idea that clam hoarding is mostly a blitz problem. In quick paced games it is easier to get left alone and it is easier to get away with less than optimal use of resources.

In PBEM games you ponder your turn for hours, when at work and when sleeping. In this kind of game clam hoarders are probably less likely to succeed.


We didn't intend to make the game a build-up-wish-win-game. We didn't imagine MP games would Last until wish was researched (slight exaggeration, but not far from the truth). High level spells are mostly there for the SP community and to hasten the end of long Lasting MP games.

Research cost can and should be altered in large games.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Many pretenders haven't the required appendages to put boots on.

For battle magic, my own Favorites paths are Water, Earth, Death. With Air and Nature as outsiders. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">True. I guess I'm biased as I generally choose those that can use boots (although that's most pretenders). Being able to get most of the benefit from a path of magic for a single item slot is pretty nice.

What do you like about Death on a Combat Pretender? The fear effect, or some spell combination? I've always thought of death mainly as support magic, with only Soul Vortex ever standing out for close combat use.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Interesting point. I typically don't play blitz games, excepting the first 10 turns or so. Even then I prefer slow enough play to allow diplomacy.

Do those who think Clams are broken play mostly blitz games?

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Most of the Dom 1 games I played saw level 9 spells in action roughly turn 40-50, IIRC. I haven't played enough with Dom 2's reduced income to have a good feel for it's research pace, but I'd be surprised if it was more than 5-10 turns behind.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Interesting point. I typically don't play blitz games, excepting the first 10 turns or so. Even then I prefer slow enough play to allow diplomacy.

Do those who think Clams are broken play mostly blitz games? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Johan had a discussion on the matter with the 'blitz-finns' on IRC. They were the first ones to bring the matter to our attention. I have only heard blitzers complain, but that might be a misconception. I very rarely play blitzes.

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<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes. It was an exaggeration. But at turn 50 the game might well be decided, at least for a handful of nations.

All recent MP games I have been in have had victory conditions set. Either by VP or dominion. They didn't Last very long (20-60 turns).

I think VP's is a good workaround on the clam hoarding. Let him hoard while I grab these VP sites. Battles for VP's will change the goals of the players and the way the game is played.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Good guess. I take Death for Soul Vortex, the fear aura is mainly a bonus. One of the biggest threats (if not the biggest) that even the toughest supercombattants have to deal with is fatigue, and Quickness only makes this concern worse. But with Soul Vortex on, this is no more an issue (well, as long as you face "leechable" enemies). This makes Water+Death (or more accurately, Quickness+Death) a fearsome combo IMO.

And, BTW, a bit of death magic makes your pretender more resistant to Decay. Although pretenders easily resist it, this spell is so cheap and easy to cast it shouldn't be underestimated if you send your god in hand-to-hand combat every other month. Same concern later in the game with Disintegrate. Last night I tested a Wyrm with Water 2 (Quickness, BoW), Earth 3 (prot 30, Iron Will) and Death 4 (Soul Vortex, resist death spells +2) and I can only say: it rocks. I'll have to try something similar on a Manticore soon.

Re: The next patch
 

I can see how the synergy would be nice, although that seems like a really expensive Wyrm. I have this image of your Wyrm with 2 Starshine Skullcaps , plus an anti-magic ring and a lightning ring on it's tail...

Alot rides on how much the tactical AI likes to cast Soul Vortex after scripted orders run out -- I take it from your sucess that it casts it frequently?

I would still fear getting trumped by someone else's combat pretender, as by the time you can put Soul Vortex into action you're potentially facing combatants who will destroy such a Wyrm, e.g. the classic Arcoscephale Nataraja. Still, imagine this would work with a Prince of Death as well.

The bit about extra resistance against Decay is new to me. Do all the paths work that way, or it just Death?

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I tested with Midgard, so the 2nd cap was actually a Spirit Helm. And although expensive it's quite affordable. And more importantly, it was good fun to play with. Especially with a nation like Midgard. It wouldn't suit Ulm so well.

Quote:

Alot rides on how much the tactical AI likes to cast Soul Vortex after scripted orders run out -- I take it from your sucess that it casts it frequently?

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I prefer to leave no room for randomness when scripting SCs -> buff x 5, attack.

Quote:

I would still fear getting trumped by someone else's combat pretender, as by the time you can put Soul Vortex into action you're potentially facing combatants who will destroy such a Wyrm, e.g. the classic Arcoscephale Nataraja.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm aware of this. I controlled 2 other nations in this test, and I can confirm a well decked-out Nataraja usually wins 1-on-1. Yet the Wyrm was very impressive in most scenarios and did some truly awesome job.

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The bit about extra resistance against Decay is new to me. Do all the paths work that way, or it just Death?

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Not only death - Astral magic protects vs Soul Slay, Nature magic protects vs Charm, etc. You get +1 bonus for every 2 levels in the relevant path.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I dont see a need to "fix" every way of winning the game as long as its not an automatic obvious choice. It kills a game for me to discover that there is strategy which will always win.

Which leaves me still undecided on this subject. On the one hand, game settings can make it not such a major deal which makes it not a major fix need IMHO. On the other hand it sounds as though its killer enough to make one type of games in Dom2, a rather popular type of games, to be less chosen or a fairly easy win. So it sounds like some sort of change might be good. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That's exactly my point.

Kristoffer is right, it is clear that some people do not have problem with clams, and some people do. I think it is mostly due to the different types of games people like to play (plus some of the people who say that they don't have problem with the clams perhaps just haven't meet their first dedicated clam-hoarder in thier game yet. But still mostly it is due to different game types).

But if clams would be changed by making them a bit harder to make (like 10 water 5 nature, or one of the many other suggestions on this thread), than the first group of people would not be affected much. But for the 2nd group of people, who liek to play differnt game types and for whom clams are a big issue, this type of fix would be extremely beneficial.


And btw, I mostly play not-blitz games, and in some of them (usually in long and some medium ones) clam abuse is a real game spoiler. So from my experience it is definetly not blitz-only problem. Although there is certanly some truth in the argument that in Blitz game clam hoarder could be easer to overlook. Unfotunatly with graphs disabled (as most people play their MP) there is no way of knowing if the person is hording the clams or not. And killing every nation with astral and water income in the begining of the game is not a good answer to clam-abusing strategy.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">empahsis mine

Presumably that Astral bonus applies to paralyze resistance as well?

That would explain why my astrally strong Void Lord in an MP game was able to wipe out an Arco army that had several mages spamming paralyze and soul slays...

I'm curious as to what exactly happened (I thought he was toast), but the replay bug... c'est la vie.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Except that this is not, as you suggest, making astral clams "a bit harder" to make - it is making them much, much, harder to make for most nations due to lacking paths and increasing their cost by 50% - and making them take 7.5/15/30 (depends on how you count) rounds rather than 5/10/20 to pay off (sans dwarven hammer). In such a situation they would not really be worth making except if you were basing your strategy around them and the acquisition on WWN mages, rather than the situation now where they can be used (but not necessarily abused) by players for whom they are not the focus of the playing strategy.

I dislike the idea that the "solution" to what I perceive as a playing-style issue (players not attacking each other ruthlessly enough allowing nations to allocate resources to go clam-crazy with dire results in very long games) should be to make the clams all but useless in general.

Re: The next patch
 

Perhaps something as simple as removing the ability to alchemize astral gems to water gems could work, or increasing the ratio to 4 or 5 to 1 or something.

This would allow people to still create clams with their natural water gem income, and help curb the abuse of hoarding clams in the ways explained here.

Re: The next patch
 

Limiting the amount of Clams that can exist in the world at the same time would stop excessive hoarding while still leaving Clams useful.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No, it would merely impose an artificial restraint causing people to race for clams before somebody else cornered the market on a scarce resource. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: The next patch
 

What's "artificial" in this context? If the limit was high enough it wouldn't be an issue unless someone was attempting the kind of hoarding that makes Clams problematic.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">(uh-oh, more water into mill, but...) You sure the gems from clams or fewer fetishes shows on graphs? I'm in a MP where I've got a moderate amount of clams and the main benefit imho has been that income from them hasn't appeared in the graphs, which are on for some reason. Same as your blood income, as it doesn't go directly to the treasury but to individual commanders, it doesn't show.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I thought the early killing of every nation heavy on astral was one of the main points of long-term survival, clams or no clams... ;p

Re: The next patch
 

It all comes down to Wish.

Clam hoarding to the extent that people seem to be concerned about has a huge oppurtunity (as well as material) cost.

The only way that it makes sense in a strategic sense is if you are racing to chain cast wish... otherwise the impact is not significant enough to justify the cost.

Without wish as the light at the end of tunnel, I don't think there is anyway that a person solely focused on getting 100 clams by turn 70 or whatever is going to win a competative MP game. If they can get away with it, then they were already gonna win... and could have won sooner if they would have refoucsed the materials dedicated to clam forging to research/casting more immediately useful rituals.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It's not turn 70, it's turn 60 or sooner. Most likely by turn 40 if the person has good water income.

Like I've already said, there's really no use for water gems. You don't need dozens of quickness boots if your mages already have water magic, murdering winter is useful, but only against a limited subset of your opponent's armies, and the water summons are fairly pathetic. Sea trolls have horrendous attack and defense stats. Now your astral gems on the other hand are going to be useful to you, but by spending only your water gems and those astral gems from the clams, you will have built your 100 clams by turn 38 of the progression. That means that you've given up 380 water gems, but it will have more than paid for itself just 8 turns later.