Re: Exploit question
 

How is it wrong? You're talking about a mod. Don't like it, don't use it. At least with a patch I can see /some/ reason to cry about it, even if I would tell such people to suck it up and stop being selfish.

Re: Exploit question
 

Its wrong since vanilla and CBM 1.5 games just won't start now. I've seen one attempt recently; it failed. Perhaps because people, myself included, got used to many good changes of CBM, like worthy rainbow and titan pretenders, usable cavalry, buffed low-level conjurations etc.

Re: Exploit question
 

You talk about a mod that became a MP standart as was described here. And now we see people who talk about "horribly imbalanced" vanilla version, while many, including myself and Kuritza, were playing from the beginning of Dom3 and before that (Dom2) and had lots of fun in this "horribly imbalanced" game. Well, it is true that most of the CBM changes are really great and give more strategic options, but the combination of such global changes as gemgen removal AND the idea that CBM is undoubtely better than vanilla and should be included by default in all MP is in the heart of this situatiuon. Actually I think many of the players who join new games just think "oh my I heard vanilla is horribly imbalanced, I should stay only with CBM party". And in such case some changes can be made that actually take away some interesting strategic variations.

Re: Exploit question
 

So ask qm if you can make your own parallel version of cbm without gemgens removed. It's about 2 minutes work to change the dm to leave them in. Then make the games yourselves and advertise them. It's what people did when they wanted to play cbm and vanilla was far more popular, not too long ago.

Clams were removed in CBM because a lot of people wanted that change. Even more people seem very happy with the change in games they're currently playing. Just because they like to play this way and you don't doesn't make them wrong. Geez.

Re: Exploit question
 

There's not much that's "interesting" about the gem generating items. You build as many of them as possible, send their income back into making more of them, and eventually end up with a gem income that cannot be taken away from you except by unimaginable amounts of luck. They've all been nerfed many times even by the devs since the days of Dominions 2. Basically, if you expect the game to last long enough that you will get a positive return on investment on a gem generating item, then they are almost always the proper way to spend your gems, and that kind of choice really limits viable strategic options. If it were possible to keep the generated gems from being removed from the commander that had them, so that they were only used for battlefield purposes, then they'd be perfectly fine items, but you can't do that, so they are broken.

Re: Exploit question
 

It doesnt reduce your options, it increases them dramatically - at the cost of, yes, being forced to make gemgens. It just silly to say that having more gems narrows your available options, so I wont even explain why its wrong. The only thing gemgens were reducing was the impact of national troops on the lategame. Which was a GREAT thing because national troops are simply not balanced against each other, with gemgens in mind.

And I dont want to make my own balance mods and advertise them - this is exactly the kind of thing that killed Dominions for me, and I dont feel like being a reanimator. I just say that its wrong when several players remove an important part of the game they dont like - for everyone.
As for the rest of community supporting this change... well, I live in Russia and I can tell you much about such things. Our whole history is about weird things being supported by the crowd. :)

Re: Exploit question
 

You didn't play in Prepo or Artifacts as far as I know, and thus haven't been involved in some of the more famous train wrecks that gens have caused. I thought they were a pretty spiffy idea for a while myself (generally because I was the only one using them and they seemed like a great tool to let me win), but extensive experience has taught me otherwise. Can you point me to an MP game in which both you and an opponent have had well over 300 gens each? In artifacts I know that I got to the point where I was mass spamming juggernauts to go for a dom win because I considered winning through military means to be nearly impossible due to the combined might of first turn defensive advantage and gens making raiding pointless.

Saying that they provide more options, while technically true, is also a great justification for playing with the debug mod on. You have SO MANY options then, and national troops don't matter at all, so it's almost perfectly balanced! Doesn't make for a good game though.

Re: Exploit question
 

They didn't. They removed it for themselves and posted the mod up. Others then chose to use it, or not. That's the essence of all mods. So again, how is that wrong?

Re: Exploit question
 

No it's not. If clams are available for mass production, and if the game will last more than the time for their cost to be paid off, then any other use of gems is suboptimal. If one option is clearly the best choice, then the other options might as well not exist. Who would make two water elemental bottles when you could instead make one clam of pearls?

The water elemental bottle also functions as a gem generator, producing the equivalent of one water gem in every battle where it shows up. It's just one that needs to be risked on the battlefield for ten turns to recoup its investment.

Nobody did that. You are free to play whatever version of the game that you want. But the thing is that it's always been the newer, less experienced players who wanted gem generators to remain in the game in nearly every argument over them for the past five or six years. In my experience, almost anybody who's played enough games to see the effect that they can have ends up arguing against them. And eventually, enough people have played in enough games that have been ended in ridiculous situations because of limitless gem income that people don't want to play those games anymore.

Re: Exploit question
 

Everything is a sliding scale, and can be taken to an extreme. Balance is only one of those sliding scales. I dont think there ever will be a complete agreement on balance. People have their own preferences for how much balance is good. Extreme balance would just be, well, chess.

Hmm....
I wonder if anyone has played a game with one of the mods that gives everyone the same nation? And using CBM of course. That might be an interesting test of skill. Not really Dominions but interesting.