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. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">But the gems are only a small aspect of the total cost of clam hoarding. I agree that water gems are of limited utility.

For R'lyeh, you're talking about a 280 gp spellcaster(who needs a random to land in water) for each dedicated clam forger... that upkeep cost (which is not small), as well as the fact that they're not researching, or using that Astral 3-4 to win battles or gatewaying your troops to the front lines or whatever...

If you're not using the astral income to cast/forge astral things (ie Wish)... then cut it in half, which doesn't seem so impressive to me.

Especially when you consider the research you've lost in those 40 turns...

EDIT: Just pointing out that in this case, we're talking about sacrificing ~1000 RP's over 38 turns for these 100 clams. And during these 38 turns, the clams are providing no benefit other than begetting more clams.

[ April 06, 2004, 20:28: Message edited by: AhhhFresh ]

Re: The next patch
 

How about just doubling the cost of clams? That way it will take longer to hoard clams, which makes lots of difference in MP.

Re: The next patch
 

[quote]Originally posted by AhhhFresh:

Quote:

Especially when you consider the research you've lost in those 40 turns...

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">True, Wish has to be researched.
I really wonder how can somebody make enough mages to produce clams, produce army that will conquer more land to get more water gem income, cover your borders so someone just doesn't walk over you (it shows in graphs if you have small army), get mages to search those provinces to find magic sites, research all the way to level 4 construction and level 9 alteration and do it all in 40 turns.
I'm sorry to say it but I just don't believe that is possible. It may be possible to get such gem income but you research will be practically 0 and you will have no army to speak off after first 40 turns.

Re: The next patch
 

[quote]Originally posted by Daynarr:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Originally posted by AhhhFresh:

Quote:

Especially when you consider the research you've lost in those 40 turns...

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">True, Wish has to be researched.
I really wonder how can somebody make enough mages to produce clams, produce army that will conquer more land to get more water gem income, cover your borders so someone just doesn't walk over you (it shows in graphs if you have small army), get mages to search those provinces to find magic sites, research all the way to level 4 construction and level 9 alteration and do it all in 40 turns.
I'm sorry to say it but I just don't believe that is possible. It may be possible to get such gem income but you research will be practically 0 and you will have no army to speak off after first 40 turns. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Besides the research you lose (~1000), you also need 50 commanders to hold the damn things... who need to be sitting on a lab to make the clams useful.

Re: The next patch
 

What if Clams only had a chance to produce a Pearl, rather than the guaranteed 1 per turn? Maybe 25% chance per turn or something? Just a suggestion from someone who's never experienced hoarding. But it wouldn't really break them, and it wouldn't completely nerf them either. Less of a payoff, even with a huge number available, and you wouldn't be guaranteed to have the number of pearls you need when you might need them.

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><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">
Well, that's what I thought too. So why aren't the clam hoarders getting steamrolled when they dump half their total gem income into clams and then dump the clam income into more clams? Is it just the water nations doing this because it's too hard to attack them before they get rolling?

If that's the case, some of my suggestions for Water magic would help there too. Giant Turtles would be amphibious and summonable on land or sea, so they help a nation going into or out of the water, and improving the water breathing benefit of Water mages would obviously help too, as would the one-province "anyone can breathe here" spell. If the water breathing limits aren't raised, a strong summon would at least make more effective use of the limit you have.

<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. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That would also lower their effective fatigue cost for mages of any given level - good.

I'd also like to see a mini Falling Frost available at a lower research level. It's a long time from Cold Bolt to Falling Frost, and other paths have already gotten several more combat options by the time FF becomes available.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">(Italics are mine)

Keep in mind that many MP games, people turn off the graphs, and I can see why, even if I prefer the graphs.

First, as you say - it allows you to know everyone's army sizes. Their magical research. The number of provinces. Why? (This is more of a complaint to Illwinter, mind you.)

Most similar strategy games only only you see see the other nations/races/competitors progress if you have made contact with them. Some, only if you have spies or other diplomatic presence in their capitols - I wish Illwinter would do something along those lines, because as is, the graphs provide way too much information (in the military intelligence sense) for free.

Just to illustrate the absurdity of this - think of Vanheim, or Pangaea. You can't even _see_ their troops, but somehow you know their military strength? The graphs, as they are, are fine for SP games, but not for MP.

Especially since, as Norfleet has pointed out, the human gamers often get too discouraged when they see how far behind everyone they are, at which point, some of them quit, or worse, simply drop out without even turning things over to the AI.

Anyways - I digress. My point was that in a good portion of the MP games out there, you wouldn't know that someone was simply sitting in hiding hoarding gems, because the graphs aren't on.

Heh. But maybe we could get _new_ graphs showing exactly how many of each gem type every nation has? Then you could tell if someone was hoarding gems. If the graphs were turned on. (And it would make at _least_ as much sense as being able to determine how far along other people's magic research was, given that the gems might give off some emanation.)

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Fact is, in competitive games, these players usually are steamrolled. I've met this strategy since the early days of Dominions 1 (3 or 4 years ago?), and used it myself to a limited extent on a few occasions - although the main reason was to provide fuel for the then all-powerful Gateway when my astral income was subpar. But I never resorted to alchemizing astral to water to clams to do this, I merely used the surplus of water gems I had no immediate use for. The few players I've seen do extreme clamhoarding like described in this thread always lagged behind because of the sluggish ROI.

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 </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You can limit ammount of claims _per pleyer_ (and call them Lesser Artifacts). Than the "race" that you describe would not be a problem. But as I said before, it would require more coding than changing clam price.

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.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, in my experience they do get steamrollered. This isn't a convincing argument however, as one can always wrangle endlessly about who's competition is better and who's really the better player, so I left it out (and I am _not_ presenting it as an argument now).

Plus, while I am confident I have some skill, I know there are players with far more experience than I. Wendigo, NGF (Jaques Vidal?), Alex Poger, and Pocus/Pythie spring immediately to mind, and I'm sure there are others as well.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Is this a good time to mention my preferred solution (water-1,nature-1) again? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: The next patch
 

Let me preface my idea by saying I haven't even gotten into an MP game yet. Since it seems most people don't want clams too heavily penalized, would it be possible to change clams into one of the artifact types that don't stack? (like, if I remember right, 2 wineskins only allow 25 supply bonus not 50 if on one commander). Then at least the initial recruiting and upkeep costs of the hoarder would increase and they'd be slowed a little by a need to recruit more commanders. If that wouldn't be enough deterrent you could combine it with one of the previous posters suggestions to make it have a %chance of success, though I'd say 25% is a bit low.

If only one clam worked per commander and it only worked 50 - 75% of the time I'd think that would slow them down enough. I don't like 25% as the clam would then be pretty useless to commanders in the field who just want a gem or two to cast battlefield spells without having to put up a lab.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">So? You could simply disable the graphs. Besides, as far as "military intelligence sense" goes, it's not like army commanders, modern or ancient, didn't know locations (and thus the number) of major enemy fortifications or the general composition and size of their enemies' forces. In Dom2, however, you don't even have reliable information as to the physical location of the other nation, let alone their army movements or positions of their forts, unless you actually send spies out to investigate.

[ April 07, 2004, 03:51: Message edited by: Alexander Seil ]

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The more I think about it, the more I think that this is correct. Wish for example, allows you to buff a vampire queen up to 150 hitpoints, with all stats (other than MR) in the 30's. With decent items, it can become a nightmare to kill such a beast.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">So? You could simply disable the graphs. Besides, as far as "military intelligence sense" goes, it's not like army commanders, modern or ancient, didn't know locations (and thus the number) of major enemy fortifications or the general composition and size of their enemies' forces. In Dom2, however, you don't even have reliable information as to the physical location of the other nation, let alone their army movements or positions of their forts, unless you actually send spies out to investigate. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You missed the gist of my point, such as it was. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Other people were saying that you could, by looking at the graphs, tell if someone was hiding away just building clams, and set forth to wallop them before the clam-hoarding turns into Wishing.

Which isn't possible if the graphs are turned off, and as I attempted to point out, there's many reasons why the graphs would be turned off in a MP game.

Re: The next patch
 

Clams, clams, clams, clams,
Clams, clams, clams, clams,
Lovely clams, wondeful claaaams!

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The more I think about it, the more I think that this is correct. Wish for example, allows you to buff a vampire queen up to 150 hitpoints, with all stats (other than MR) in the 30's. With decent items, it can become a nightmare to kill such a beast. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">So we see that Zen is smarter than we think he is. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif (No offense Zen)

Obviously I agree, since I posted the original quote... but allow me to expound.

Clams are nice, Clams are good... I make them myself. But what do they really do?

They let you chain cast WISH while possibly having an unassuming amount of territory in an MP game. IE You can come out of nowhere and win the game... because that is what WISH was meant to do. Change the game.

We're talking a Vampire Queen every turn.

The old rules don't apply.

HOWEVER

If you can't cast WISH what now? Well, you can chaincast Ethergate, which is pretty sweet... but not worth it. I love Ethergate, but I can't imagine commiting that much, if all I'm gonna get is a buncha big dudes with moonblades.

You can also convert those pearls to other denominations pretty easily... which is nice, but not a game breaker.

[ April 08, 2004, 23:28: Message edited by: AhhhFresh ]

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hrm... Why a vampire queen instead of a doom horror?

I played with wish a bit, and really couldn't find a better bang for my buck than a doom horror... GOR him and send him to take just about anything. Stat move of 10, and apparently impossible to kill. If he had hand slots he could take fortresses with a couple gate cleavers... sadly, he does not.

Is there some fatal flaw in the doom horror that I haven't seen? I generally give him a pendant of luck and an amulet of magic resistance.

Well, I often don't get up to wish before a game is over, so 'generally' might not be accurate.

Yes, these are SP games... My skills aren't up to taking on human opponents yet.. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: The next patch
 

The thing about WISH is that it has a seriously high coolness factor. It would be a real pity to lose it, and I would prefer any other solution that works.

Maybe alter the wishes themselves? No more asking for specific creature types - maybe you could wish for a "saviour" or somesuch, and get a random creature from a pool of pretty-good critters.

Maybe also do something about chain-casting Armageddon. In general, have wishes that improve the position of the wisher, rather than trashing everyone else.

Or just make clams water-1, nature-1 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">More item slots, and immortality. Think of a vampire queen pretender with rainbow 5, astral 10, and 150 hitpoints in a dominion 10 province. Give her a sword of swiftness or some other weapon, charcoal shield, starshine skullcap, elemental armour, quickness boots, luck pendant and anti-magic amulet. A wish for power brings your attack, defense and magic resist up to over 30, and you are completely immune to the elements. There are very few spells that will get through at this point. You'll also regenerate something like 15 hitpoints per turn. I've had one wipe out an army with about 15 deep seers, 5 kings of the deeps, and 50+ sea trolls.

The doom horrow on the other hand, suffers from a relative lack of item slots, and is still vulnerable to elemental damage. They definetly are superior raiders to undefended provinces in my opinion, since its a rare map that they can't traverse in one turn.

[ April 09, 2004, 00:57: Message edited by: Graeme Dice ]

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">So? You could simply disable the graphs. Besides, as far as "military intelligence sense" goes, it's not like army commanders, modern or ancient, didn't know locations (and thus the number) of major enemy fortifications or the general composition and size of their enemies' forces. In Dom2, however, you don't even have reliable information as to the physical location of the other nation, let alone their army movements or positions of their forts, unless you actually send spies out to investigate. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You missed the gist of my point, such as it was. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Other people were saying that you could, by looking at the graphs, tell if someone was hiding away just building clams, and set forth to wallop them before the clam-hoarding turns into Wishing.

Which isn't possible if the graphs are turned off, and as I attempted to point out, there's many reasons why the graphs would be turned off in a MP game. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually, your point seems to be that graphs are too accurate, and it was responded such way.

As for turning off graphs in MP game there are lots of reasons not to turn them off so it comes down to personal preference.

The thing is graphs are only one (and easiest) way to discover if someone is turtling in a game. Other method would be using scouts or diplomacy (finding out info from another player) to name a few.

BTW. has ANYONE pulled that tactic off in MP game?

As for the Wish - it's level 9-alteration spell and by the time you research it and get enough gem income to cast it, it will be late game. If you fear someone might pull it off, just increase research cost and make SURE it will be cast in (very) late game.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">A wish for power does not grant improved magic resistance. It is impossible to improve magic resistance in such a way: Power only is +50 HP, +20 Str, +10 Atk/Def/Prec. And 15 deep seers, 5 Kings of the Deep, and sea trolls are weaklings anyway. They are by far not equal in cost, so it's hardly a surprise that they failed.

Re: The next patch
 

BTW, whoever posted that a nature-1 water-1 clam would be beyond the reach of any national mage without a lucky random pick was wrong: he reckoned without the Marshmaster (Miasma C'tis) and the Master of Five Elements (Spring&Autumn T'ien Ch'i). Both have fixed water and nature magic. So those two nations would become the new favored clam hoarders - but hey, at least they can be easily attacked, having most of their powerbase on land. (Of course, jade priestesses would also be able to forge clams, and any nation with water *or* nature and random picks would be a potential clam hoarder - so add Pangaea, Man, and IIRC Machaka to the list.)

Even before clam hoarding was introduced, I'd already decided not to play any MP game with the graphs off. So that doesn't affect me. I still wouldn't mind seeing the clam raised to Water-3 though, if it really is a problem. It already takes 20 clam-turns to pay for a clam; raising it to 40 would pretty much eliminate clams as anything other than a slow form of alchemy for "excess" water gems. (I don't see how your water gems can be excess unless your *only* opponents are Caelum and Jotunheim and you're playing on a map with no seas, and even then you can probably find some use.)

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">More item slots, and immortality. Think of a vampire queen pretender with rainbow 5, astral 10, and 150 hitpoints in a dominion 10 province. Give her a sword of swiftness or some other weapon, charcoal shield, starshine skullcap, elemental armour, quickness boots, luck pendant and anti-magic amulet. A wish for power brings your attack, defense and magic resist up to over 30, and you are completely immune to the elements. There are very few spells that will get through at this point. You'll also regenerate something like 15 hitpoints per turn. I've had one wipe out an army with about 15 deep seers, 5 kings of the deeps, and 50+ sea trolls.

</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">A Vampire Queen that's rainbow 5 is also an incredibly enormous investment. Empower up to Astral 6, lend 3 astral boosters (could rely on items more if you don't mind horror-marking), that's somewhere around 350 extra astral above the initial 100-astral VQ wish.

Wish for power, that's +100. Wish for magic power x 5, that's plus +500. Now you're at 1050 astral. Then throw in the cost of the gear too.

You could get 10 doom horrors for that price, for instance, which gives you a lot more strategic flexibility (raid 10 back-end provinces in a turn, for instance; oh, can also fly all-weather IIRC) and won't all die to a single unlucky die roll or get auto-paralyzed by Petrify or fall to a lucky hit from a Golem with a gate cleaver or what-have-you.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It also is pretty decent even without gear or a massive investment in empowering.

[ April 09, 2004, 01:51: Message edited by: Taqwus ]

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Graphs do not effectively reveal clam hoarding, since clam income, like fever fetishes, earth blood stones, and certain summoned units, receive their gems directly and not in the score graph. Besides, clam hoarding wasn't "introduced", it's always been around. The concept of accumulating things that give you income is as old as time itself, and this is generally a rather slow investment process anyway, barring some lucky sites. Since there are no nations that can naturally produce all of the apparatus involved in the creation of clams, this is a greatly exaggerated issue.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I agree. This is about the same as my earlier suggestion, which I like a little better but would be a little for complex (but perhaps more fun) to code. That was, that there are only so many pearls generated by all the clams in the world per turn, split between all the clams, max 1 per clam. The number could be say equal to the number of sea provinces in the world, or perhaps twice that number. Clams work normally until that number is exceeded, but beyond that start having a less and less chance of getting one of the limited number of pearls that will be generated.

PvK

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Petrify is about a 4 turn paralysis, that's not nearly enough to kill a beast that regenerates 15 per turn with invulnerability. That's also a rather lucky die roll. Magic resist of 35 gives about a 0.004% chance for an effect to take hold with standard penetration. If you do manage to kill the VQ, then it's only a couple of turns till it's back and ready to fight again, even if it dies outside of its dominion.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Every nation with a water 1 national mage, or a relatively inexpensive random pick has the "apparatus" to build clams.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">They are very similar in cost, when you consider the gold spent on upkeep and purchasing, and don't consider the astral pearls from clams as part of the cost. After all, they are entirely free after 20 turns. Those mages cost 4000 gold, and the troops alone had an upkeep of 150. The water gem cost was around 140. That kind of conventional army should be able to destroy any lone unit with only minimal losses, or there is a serious balance problem.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You're forgetting that without hammers and/or a site, it's much harder to get the ball rolling. Hammers are 20 earth gems base, and every forger needs one or the ROI goes down greatly.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You're forgetting that without hammers and/or a site, it's much harder to get the ball rolling. Hammers are 20 earth gems base, and every forger needs one or the ROI goes down greatly. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Not really. Only first one is 20 earth gems, every additional one almost always will cost you 15 earth gems or less, since you will be using hammer to forge new hammer, not to mention forging site that you might find.

[ April 09, 2004, 07:02: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You're forgetting that it takes at least an Earth-2 mage, normally, to produce hammers, with the aid of boots. Only a few nations are equipped with this combination (Pan, IF Ulm, Atlantis) normally, and a few others might get access if they got very lucky with randoms. R'lyeh Starspawns are, unfortunately, excluded due to their unfortunate lack of feet that renders them unable to use Earth boots.

If anything, Atlantis is the definitive clam-hoarding nation, having everything required to make clams: Linked randoms on a King of the Deep that can easily roll Earth, cheap water-1 nationals, protected, underwater base, and home province water income as a seed.

So if clam-hoarding is so overwhelmingly powerful, why is Atlantis not much more popular?

[ April 09, 2004, 08:45: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">By that logic, the astral pearls on YOUR clams are also free, and obviously, you've chosen to utilize them this way instead. Don't tell me you don't have them, you're Atlantis, *THE* top clam hoarding nation.

Furthermore, your army was tailored for a very poor fit against your opposition: Water mages, who are nearly entirely reliant on cold attacks for their battlefield spells, are very useless against a cold-immune target with high protection. They may as well have been complete non-participants, as you effectively sent them to their deaths.

Sea trolls are rather poor combatants for their cost: Their protection is substandard, and they generally underperform compared to standard trolls. The Sea King itself is a pure water mage, and suffers from the above....not to mention the number of casualties you inflicted on yourself by not isolating these dangerous, prone to Breath of Wintering water mages. Their only strength lies in the ability to be summoned on land and then marched into the sea to invade sea provinces...an advantage you more or less throw away by using them to fight on land. I do not think my empowered prestige pretender would have been necessary to drive your forces back into the sea: The ordinary, default model I started with should have been adequate, given the absolutely lousy force composition you chose for the job.

Look on the bright side: At least your upkeep is lower now.

[ April 09, 2004, 08:55: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You're forgetting that it takes at least an Earth-2 mage, normally, to produce hammers, with the aid of boots.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I am not forgeting it. But you are forgeting the fact that it was you who mentioned hammers in the first place in realtions to clam forging, and you have said that it takes 20 earth gem to make them. I was simply correcting you, since if you are capable of making 1 hammer obviously you are capable of making another. Availabilty of hammers is entirely different topic from their gem cost.

[ April 09, 2004, 11:43: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have not built a single clam, since I consider it too cheesy.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">And I suppose you know of some other national mages that Atlantis can use then?

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Your original pretender would have had no more than about 100 hitpoints, and would have had only 4 mirror images on a defense of around 10. If I was building clams, then I would have had a whole bunch of herald lances on initiates of the deep, which I know from experience can defeat a standard issue VQ. Of course, my major problem was that I got the useless water elementals instead of the much more useful ice elementals.

[ April 09, 2004, 15:06: Message edited by: Graeme Dice ]

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">So you willfully squander your national resources over a belief in what you see as "cheese" instead of playing the game as written. That is certainly your perogative, but does not figure into a rational analysis.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The sheer amount of research you were giving up on such an excursion, towing around an entire boatload of mages, must have been immense. Me, I never tow around mages, particularly mages that I know have no effective magics, into a battle unless I need a very specific spell cast, when they could instead be generating research...unless you are finished with all of your research?

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think that even my basic starting air-4 gets me a lot more than 4 mirror images. And I'm surprised you didn't have herald lances anyway. It's not like they're expensive, hard-to-get items, and if you're choosing to use them on initiates, which are capitol only, as opposed to the more available, and disposable, scouts, you're not going to need that many.

And of course you got water elementals instead of ice ones. You have forgotten that the Mictlan climate is warm, not cold?

[ April 09, 2004, 16:31: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It also illustrates the weakness of water magic, since the only effective thing to do with it in the very long term is to turn it into astral pearls.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Sure, it would have been large in the early game, but by this point it isn't much of an expense. This is still an illustration of an imbalance, since no single unit should be able to destroy an army made up of the toughest summons that are available to that nation, and certainly not one backed up by multiple mages with ninth level spells researched.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">They are very expensive, since they are 10 astral pearls, and astral is the most generally useful magic.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Did you happen to notice the snow on the ground in that battle? I would have thought that that would have been enough to cause ice elementals to form.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">So you willfully squander your national resources over a belief in what you see as "cheese" instead of playing the game as written. That is certainly your perogative, but does not figure into a rational analysis.

</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Norfleet, I think you keep confusing "wining" the game with having fun from playing it. Granted, it is possible than for you one equal another. But personally I try never to use "cheesy" tactics in my games, because it spoils the fun for me, since I know that I am mostly wining not because of my skill and intelligence, but because I am abusing very simple and overpowered strategy again and again.

And yes, there are cheesy strategies in any strategy games, and I've played a lot of them. Dom2 is much more balanced in this respect that average strategic game, but it doesn't mean it has zero cheesy and/or abusive strategies. Clams is by far the most obvious example of it.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It also illustrates the weakness of water magic, since the only effective thing to do with it in the very long term is to turn it into astral pearls.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I think this is far from demonstrated. Although water could use some new tricks, "the only effective thing" is a vast overstatement.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Sure, it would have been large in the early game, but by this point it isn't much of an expense. This is still an illustration of an imbalance, since no single unit should be able to destroy an army made up of the toughest summons that are available to that nation, and certainly not one backed up by multiple mages with ninth level spells researched.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">
Oh, you had Water Queens and Abominations in that battle? They weren't mentioned in the previous post. Sea Trolls are far from "the toughest summons available" to ANY nation. Granted, some of the toughest summons available to Atlantis are aquatic (where are the items that let a commander take aquatic troops onto land? Amulet of the Fish will let Auluudh or a Nerid come out to play, but not bring Sea Serpents, War Lobsters or Crab Hybrids with them.), but they still have some better options than Sea Trolls.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">They are very expensive, since they are 10 astral pearls, and astral is the most generally useful magic.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">
I wouldn't consider a 10 gem item "very expensive" - certainly not compared to multiple-Wished VQs and their equipment.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Did you happen to notice the snow on the ground in that battle? I would have thought that that would have been enough to cause ice elementals to form. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, next time cast Wolven Winter to make sure. You have all those water mages and research and "useless" water gems, right?

Ice elementals, BTW, can damage cold immune creatures just fine (although they might have some problem with supercombatants).


It does seem to me that water magic isn't very useful when fighting on land against cold immune opponents, and there are a disproportionate number of cold immune monsters (and of course the vast majority of provinces are land). There are only a few water battle spells (Ice Strike, Sailors Death) that work against cold immune targets at all (castable on land, anyway), and they aren't very powerful (Sailors Death doesn't even work on inanimate targets). Worse, Atlantis's normal troops use poison weapons and armor, and the largest Category of cold immune creatures is ALSO poison immune, making their normal troops less effective too. Fire and Air don't have many ways of damaging elemental immune targets either - but there are far fewer creatures naturally immune to fire or lightning.

How about a Waterspout that stays on the battlefield for a few rounds (like the Cloud spells), crushes targets and throws them around (similar to trample)? Or a Water Jet that just deals some physical damage but doesn't require another path like Geyser? Those might not work that well against supercombatants, but they'd at least help against undead or Jotun armies.

To a certain extent, the water nations' difficulty on land counterbalances their defensive advantage in being difficult for land nations to attack. But inability to project power onto land will eventually be crippling. Furthermore, land nations that have water magic (Caelum, Jotunheim) have this problem too (although in their case there's a consolation prize - somewhat easier access to the sea than most land nations).

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't think it's an overstatement at all. I think it's very clear that in the long term, nothing will pay off as much as building clams. You have a limited set of three water queens that can summon their own troops, and the rest of the uses for large numbers of water gems only have effects for a few turns.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Only one of the water queens is amphibious, and abominations are astral summons, not water.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">And that's part of the problem. Atlantis has no summonable or tough troops that can come onto land. The mother guard are nice, but its too expensive to haul around a lot of them.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">On land? I suppose they could go for enliven statues, but those aren't particularly impressive either.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The cost of astral pearls produced by clams is effectively 0 after 20 turns.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Like a 250 hitpoint vampire queen with immunity to every element, a 0.004% chance of MR spells effecting it, and multiple damage shields you mean? I suppose one could try and use mandragoras, but their sleep vines aren't particularly likely take effect and the fire shield will make mincemeat of them.

[ April 10, 2004, 16:55: Message edited by: Graeme Dice ]

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This is not something, I'm very familar with, as I have yet to get to the "uber-late" game mechanics in any of the MP games I am participating.

But my feeling is, that the only way to properly defeat an opponent's SC, is with your own SC... SC's are specifically designed to make mince meat of hordes of troops... summons or not.

The fact that she's undead, means there are weapons out there that do x3 AP damage to her... so you need somebody who can take and give a few hits, but it doesn't seem so hard to achieve...

But maybe I'm missing something?

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Sure, but you then need to get your SC's into the same place as her, which can be difficult with something so mobile and stealthy.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Sure, but you then need to get your SC's into the same place as her, which can be difficult with something so mobile and stealthy. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Her stealth is +0... which is not very scary. Just set all your provinces in range to 10, and you at least know where she is... obviously, she'll obliterate said defenders, but if she can't hide, then she will be a victim to your SC.

That is just a matter of being the better player... and/or being lucky.

She wants to stay in positive dominion, and doesn't want to be confronted in general... so that makes her weak.

Yes, this is all theoretical... I'm not an MP badass. (Though I wish I was!)

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That can be a surprisingly trivial exercise.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You don't have to find the VQ. Just force it to come to you.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That can be a surprisingly trivial exercise.

Quote:

Sun Tzu, "Art of War" If we wish to fight, the enemy can be forced to an engagement even though he be sheltered behind a high rampart and a deep ditch. All we need do is attack some other place that he will be obliged to relieve.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You don't have to find the VQ. Just force it to come to you. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">On the OFFENSIVE I think that VQ's are as strong as strong can be. If you let them dictate how it'd gonna be, then you've already lost.

However, if you force them to react to you, then they're no more than expensive scouts... *ouch* that guy had a flambeau! C'est la vie.

Re: The next patch
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That can be a surprisingly trivial exercise.

Quote:

Sun Tzu, "Art of War" If we wish to fight, the enemy can be forced to an engagement even though he be sheltered behind a high rampart and a deep ditch. All we need do is attack some other place that he will be obliged to relieve.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You don't have to find the VQ. Just force it to come to you. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">On the OFFENSIVE I think that VQ's are as strong as strong can be. If you let them dictate how it'd gonna be, then you've already lost.

However, if you force them to react to you, then they're no more than expensive scouts... *ouch* that guy had a flambeau! C'est la vie. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually VQ is stronger on defense than on offense. That's because on defense she tend to fight in higher friendly dominion, and that makes her stronger (in addition to her immortality in friendly dominion of course). While on offense you more often than not press into hostile territory, especially if your opponent is aware what he is dealing with and has build temple/preaching priests everywhere along your borders.

I had a game where me and Truper come to virtual stalemate for about 20 turns, despite intense fighting and heavy casaulties. We both were using VQs and we both had to be very carefull about our armies and our pretenders, dominion-wise. I won the war eventually, but this was mostly because I managed to outmanerved my opponent and pushed my dominion deeper and deeper into his territory, as well as inflicting more losses on him than he did on me. The "attack with dominion" was performed though combination of temples, preachers, castles protecting most important temples, and my assasin prophet preaching and spreading dominion in most critical places deep behind enemy lines. Meanwhile it was mostly war of attrition, since any strong army than any of us could move forward could be easely wiped out by minimal forces lead by fully decked enemy VQ.

[ April 11, 2004, 07:39: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]