Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

I think that they are worth 7 blood gems a pop. I think that they are fantastic units. I actually think that 7 blood gems a pop just about the correct cost, not too high not too low, just right.

The problem is if that's the correct cost then why do soul contracts cost so little?

For the paltry price of 60 blood ( you *really* should be able to forge a hammer if you are going blood ) you get 1 per turn. That pays for itself in 9 turns. This is much faster than other income generating types of investments.

Clams take ( assuming alchemy from astral -> water ) 14 turns to pay themselves off.

Fever Fetishes take ( assuming closed loop via alchemy again ) take 20 turns ( but really people probably do not close loop these ).

Vampires pay off in ~ 14 turns.

It just seems like the price of contracts is a little too low. If the requirement was 6 Blood to make them the cost 125 slaves which means it would pay off in 14 turns almost exactly the same as other income streams.

I just don't see why these things are so inexpensive. I just won a game based on them and really they are quite powerful.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

As a guy that's getting smacked around by devils pretty badly, I find that easy to believe. Although I don't know if the key to my opponents devil hordes is soul contracts (though I've been wondering about that).

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

60 slaves takes 10 turns to pay for itself. 10 turns is enough time to have your entire empire wiped out.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

I've been that guy a couple of times, LOL. So this time I wanted to be the guy on the other side. And yup it's not horribly hard. There is a small window, however, in which you can get stomped.

I doubt he is summoning them. They are quite difficult to summon in quanity, the casting requirements are quite high.

Uhm, I think it's 9, like I posted.

Of course there is a window in which you can get busted. Like all investment stratgies. My question is why does this one take less time than all the others to pay off?

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

It's really not fair to assume a hammer on one side (and not even count its cost or design points on a pretender to get one) and alchemy conVersion loss on the other. Imo, the comparison is flawed at it's very base.

- Kel

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

I believe it depends on your need.
If you're at peace and plan for a long term game, Soul Contract is better.

But the chance to get 10 devils in 2-3 rounds instead could be useful if you're in immediate need for them in battle.

Not to count the Soul Contract guy get horror marked, and is victim of horrors, that find him even if he's hiding.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

I couldnt agree more. I see no reason to take into account hammers, as that is a different story all together. I would say 11 turns payback for the soul contract. I also think that astral pearls are worth more than water gems, so taking into account alchemy for payback time is somewhat lame. If anything, the clams have 8 or 9 turn payback because of relative gem worth. Also, your vampire comparison is flawed in that you not only get the 1 vampire/turn, you get a powerful vampire lord.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

If the comparison is "how long do they take to pay for themselves", soul contract loses as you cannot alchemise devils into blood slaves for a new soul contract. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Vampire lords may be more expensive than hammer forged soul contracts, though you may be lucky and find a summoning bonus site. Besides which, vampires are immortal, which is quite handy.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

The relative worth of astral vs. water is quite dependent on the nation, but IMO it's clear that for any clamhoarding nation (which is what we're talking about in this case), the water is worth more than the astral.

I expect that anybody that's doing clamhoarding (or at least doing it well) should be running a substantial surplus in astral, and doing a lot of alchemizing from astral to other types, never from non-astral to astral.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Uhm ... the hammers are assumed on both sides. Removing them does not change the ratios which is what this is all about. Soul contracts yeild an effective gem supply which is 150% greater ( given the input ) than the other sources.

Do they? Not in any game I have played. In games I have played I somewhat commonly get the message "a horror attacked so and so" however I can not watch the battle ( "bad VCR" ) and when I check he is still alive. Perhaps someone has seen a Horror kill a scout with a soul contract before, but I have not.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

I don't think so. They're making clams _because_ astral gems are more valuable to them. After all - compare to fever fetishes. If you run a surplus of fire gems, but need ... air, you have to convert 4 fire for each air gem. The astral gems are more valuable because they're essentially worth twice as much as any other gem when alchemizing from one to another.

I say this as someone who has clammed, and who has fevered, and who has had at least something like 40 fetishes and 40 clams going in the same game, with a non-fire, non-water, non-astral nation, without ever alchemizing to build the fetishes or clams.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

You are adding extra factors to the equation. Barring extraneous factors, clams take 10 turns to pay themselves and soul contracts take ~ 11.5 .

Even that isn't really a great comparison because since there are so many different factors that differ between the two but assuming alchemical losses, the cost of speeding up clams beyond your natural water income, and not taking into account reduced gold, pop and research loss from speeding up blood income makes for a flawed basis of comparison.

Admittedly, it would be difficult to come up with the losses from speeding up blood production so the obvious thing to do is to not take into account rushed production on either side, in which case, clams pay for themselves faster than soul contracts.

- Kel

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Uhm if you are alchemizing ( note: soul contracts give essentially blood that makes this a totally valid comparison ) and you have no hammers then it takes *20* turns for a clam to pay for itself.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Clams actually take only 5 turns to pay for themselves with no hammer if you'd rather have astral pearls, or 10 turns if you want something other than than astral or water. It's only 20 turns if you want to convert them back into water gems to make more clams.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Soul contracts don’t give gems; they don’t even give blood slaves. They give devils. They are only worth anything at all if devils are what you need. Its also not possible to set up a exponential growth situation with soul contracts, since you cant turn devils into soul contracts.

The soul contract can never pay for another soul contract for free (as is the case for the 20-turn clam with alchemy. This is a very important difference.

Clams give you astral gems, which through alchemy can be used to do almost anything, including get more clams.

Soul contracts get you devils, which are only good for flying around and smashing things. Granted this a pretty generally useful ability, but not nearly as flexible as a high astral income.

I like devils a lot, but I haven’t found soul contracts are a good investment in a close run game. I’d rather have my devils right now, keeping me alive, or killing off the other guy.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

I agree with that. 100% correct.

Not as flexible true. However the soul contract produces the end product. You need not spend the caster time ( which is important ) to convert your gems into something that can smash things.

I would imagine that in close game you are spending your blood slaves on SC devils not on devils. It's very hard to actually summon devils in any quanity ( except once you reach blood 9 ).

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Once you commit to devils, you are stuck with them. Your opponent will
learn about what you are doing, and will have about ten turns to prepare
for them. As someone who was utterly destroyed the first time he faced
devils, and who has utterly destroyed any devil hoarding opponent since,
I will stick with clams and fetishes, thank you very much.

Thank you for bringing back the memory of decimating and routing more than
a hundred devils and abysyan intantries with two indy sorceresses and a
jade amazonne! And then doing it again, because the guy was stuck with the
soul contract strategy.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

You are special yes indeed. No one else has ever obliterated tons of devils.

The assertion is: *if* you think devils are worth 7 blood a pop then it seems that Soul Contracts return more than other investment types of strategies.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Never?

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Devils are easily killed under storm, with massive spellfire or wrathful skies.

Devils aren't so strong ...
Stormies are, but they're limited to lightning attack, that could be avoided by Lightn Immunity.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Even if there are ways to deal with Demons, the fact is that they are bloodily (!) cheap when you got them through Contracts. I do think- and other experienced players too- that Contracts are somewhat overpowered. The contract takes some time to pay off for sure, but with a Blood nation you can churn a very high supply of slaves and transform them into Devil-factories without even having to research Blood. Best of all you have to use 1 mage-turn to make the contract but no time is lost summoning the devils, that come automatically after that.
It's not a rush strategy, but an income of 60 slaves/turn is possible relatively early, allowing mass-production of though devils. Tell me about one other good summon for such a low cost ...

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Interesting discussion http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Cohen is right that especially against Airnations devils are not that useful .

A comparison Soul contracts vs. Clams is not good imo because both need different sources .
So you can compare them with Bloodstones somewhat and mainly with Vampirelords .

After you summoned your unique blood SCs there is not so much left to spend blood on :
- Bloodstones
- Good items like Hellsword / Blood Thorn
- Vampire lords
- The lvl 9 summoning spells for Devils/Storm demons etc.

If you are a 2nd tier bloodnation like pangenea you can bloodhunt a bit and use it only for soul contracts and don't need to research blood at all .
As a 1st tier bloodnation you don't need to research higher than blood 5/6/7 then too urgently if you want e.g. only the Ice devils or the Arch devils .

In the offensive Devils are better , in the defensive Vampire lords with vampires are better .
If e.g. Ulm finds independent bloodmages and brings up the FotA this would be horrible for Soul Contract forging too .

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

I agree fully with you http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
3 other "good" summons of relative low cost come to my mind :
- Vampires from vampire lords
- Ghosts from wraithlords
- Demon knights / storm demons via the infernal xxx spell .

Soul contract is the easiest to get . Mictlan needs anyways construction 4 for SDR . Normally to get the second cheap +1 blood item , the bloodthorn you need to go construction 6 though to get 5B mages to forge the soul contracts .
Only vampires + storm demons are almost as useful as demons but given that you need blood 9 to get storm demons in half reasonable quantities and that you need B3D4 on your pretender to summon the first Vampire lord devils are a bit too cheap aquireable via soul contract .

Most important is also the time . In theory you could take e.g. a FoB pretender and start forging soul contracts with it once you reach 80 blood already . As you said you have your SoulContract devil economy probably running 10-30 turns before your enemies get something which is almost as strong summonwise .

You force your enemies almost to get staff(s) of storms .
Later by summoning some storm demons you can use them against the staff of storms battlemage anti-devil armies and the devils for the rest .
Basically the only thing you have to worry are enemy UBERSCs then , especially Airqueens .

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

In fact IMO Staff of Storms should be reviewed.
Const-6 and A4 needed, because a mage that cast Storm should be A4, so to channel the storm power into a staff he need to be A4.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Vampires are a great comparison. Same source, same type of product, same rate of production. Still have things to account for (like cursed items and research levels) but it's a lot closer than clams or bloodstones.

- Kel

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Yep . Vampires + devils serve 2 different purposes imo :
Vampires are mainly defensive weapons , devils allaround weapons . So devils are a bit more useful and as others have said already the scout wastes no magetime while the Vampire lord needs to allysummon and each turn he does something else like forging / casting you lose a vampire .
So the RoI of the soul contract is really a lot better .

With forgeboni like dwarfenhammers , sites and the forge of ancients the soul contracts become really horrible .
You could really try to bring forge up as abysia . Your demonbreds could forge then earth bloodstones , fiever fetishes + your warlocks with only 1 +1blooditem or a lucky bloodrandom without that soul contracts .
So if you save your blood even if the forge gets dispelled after a few turns your gain is huge .

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

I am sure. Of course, I would never assume that I would have 100+ earth gems and site bonuses to boot in any reasonable amount of time and if we start assuming ideal and unlikely things, than a lot of things become possible. We might just as well assume that someone has a 999 reinforced Arcane Nexus up, , has site bonuses and multiple S9 mages available. Maybe throw in a const bonus for clamming, who knows since it's all unlikely and hypothetical.

I don't even remember the Last MP game I played where I found a const site bonus.

- Kel

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Soul Contracted Devils are effectively free troops.

They provide you with a mass of highly mobile ratehr strong troops: of course they can be beaten, but so what? More are on the way...

And you are not "stuck" with the strategy... clearly you can be simultaneously clamming, and fetishing, and doing whatever other ridiculously overpowered strategies you might have going for you... except you also have loads of free devils!

So there is no downside... there really isnt any other worthwhile activity for expending your blood except for making some blood thorns, blood stones, summoning up the unique devils, and given the quantity of blood a skilled blood nation can rake in this is quite trivial activity happening alongside your soul contracting operations.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

You're forgetting Vampire Lords and Fallen Angels, both good summons.

And Blood could be used to paradrop Hordes from Hell early and cause problems to your enemy (I underline early, later there will be many castles and stronger units), especially cutting out withdraw options to enemy armies that you're going to engage.

Not to count some good battle spells ... sadly you've to bring a lot of slaves with you to cast blood battle magic, and this is a shame IMO.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

I'd rather be getting 30 devils a turn and paradropping THEM onto my opponents.

I think you could reasonably have 30 contracts by turn 50 AND have summoned most or even all of the unique devils if you play a blood nation like Abysia BoH or Mictlan.

That translates to 4-500 devils generated at a cost of less than 4 blood per (and dropping), at turn 50. You want your devils NOW? I want them now... and later... and later on... etc etc.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Yeah you are right most likely you will have 25% bonus from dwarfen hammer but not more since ulm or somebody else will get the 50% unique hammer and probably if anyone casts the forge it is ulm .

Yeah the devils are strong . I have thought more about it today but it is not really imbalanced i think . If you bloodhunt you have to sacrifice significant amounts of goldincome and you have to use some of your mages for bloodhunting . So you have a significantly smaller number of mages than e.g. a pythiumopponent who has about the same number of provinces with comparable income .

So he has inferior troops on battlefield but he normally can field more battlemages and compensate this way .

If you go to lategame your population maybe quite damaged by perhaps taking deathscale since abysia has this as a special bonus or by raiding + random events .
On a smaller map like aran where you don't have more than 20-30 provinces for a long time a clamhoarder may find it worthy to limit your natural further bloodhunt abilities by killing your pop like by plague etc. + suicide pillage .


Astral income by clams increases exponential over time while bloodincome by bloodhunt is hard to increase .
If you aren't able to kill a clamhoarding ryleh/caelum/pythium in time you get 1-2 new soul contracts or similiar / turn while he gets 5 or more new clams each turn which he can either use for e.g. summoning tartarians , wishing or whatever else he wants .

As abysia if you want to try that too it needs a lot of effort by e.g. summoning spectres + recruiting sages/warlocks in hope to get some with W .
As mictlan you can in theory clamhoard very well but mictlan is earlygame highly vulnerable so probably you don't get that powerful than abysia early-midgame .
With blood you mainly get strong summons , strong Scs and good items but you lack battlemagic .
Abysia has good battlemages with their fireskill . Mictlan has imo not that possiblities though they are magically more flexible but their only truly useful battlemage , the F2B3 priests cost 390 gold + are capitol only .


Perhaps these reasons make abysia so loved by lots of ppl because they are with mictlan the best bloodhunter .
Additionally they have heat 3 + the deathbonus +5 firegem starting income which is like +75 income and most important with firemagic good battlemages .
They don't need to waste blood on dominionpush as mictlan has too .

This almost perfect synergy is perhaps the reason because ppl complain almost as much about abysia as about caelum .

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

I think we should take another look at the numbers real quick.

Clam/fetish hoarding: Costs 10 gems, gives 1 a turn. This will repay itself in 10 turns.

Soul contracts: Costs 80 slaves, gives 7 slaves a turn. This will repay itself in.. what was it? 11.5 turns?

So, in reality (not including any additional bonuses), clams are actually a better investment, but the problem is they don't give you the finished product. You have to spend a character action to actually use what you get, as opposed to Soul contracts, which don't require this.

Yet, as others have pointed out, Soul contracts have the downside of inflexibility. Once the appropriate counters are in place, you might wish you had spent those blood slaves in another way.

So, Soul contracts have advantages and disadvantages when compared to clamming/fetishing. Seems balanced to me.

Whether devils are actually worth 7 slaves though, is a different question. They may be worth more...so possibly Soul contracts are unbalanced after all, even compared to clamming (a strategy many think is unbalanced). We'd have to compare stats of similar summoned units of the same research level for that.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

I don’t think Soul Contracts are all that great if you have easy access to the summing spell as well.

If you assume that devils are what you need, Soul Contract is only desirable if you either a) cannot easily summon devils directly or
b) Do not need your devils right away.

If you need an Army right now it matters not at all how good a return on investment a Soul Contract has. And who can really be sure what the game situation will be like in 5 or 10 turns?

If you are playing Abysia (the only nation I’ve seriously used Devils with), its quite easy to just summon them. You need level three blood and one demonbred per devil per turn. The Demonbreds can cast the spell without items or empowerment. At 260 gold and sacred the cost of the mages to support the summoning is not too severe.

Soul Contract requires 5(!) Blood. No Abysian mages can cast this without a boost. Your closest bet is a Warlock with 3 blood and a random pick. If you don’t have a warlock with a random pick in blood you need con4 and two boosters in order to forge the item at all. 11 turns after that, your first soul contract will make its return on investment. If you count the cost of the boosters (60 additional blood, I think), that first contract actually takes 20 turns to payback. Of course you could amortize that over later contracts.

Still, the cost of that first contract is 140 slaves and some time. By the time that you get your first devil out of the soul contract, someone summoning devils directly could have an army of 20 Devils out in the field. My money is on the guy with the army

As to Huzurdaddi’s point that I would be spending the Blood on SCs instead anyway, this is probably true a bit later, but Abysia can get Devils out with less research and boosting.

I’m assuming the game is played on a small enough map that you cannot reasonably expect to just be left alone. Certainly if you have 20 or 30 turns without major conflict, Soul Contract is a better deal.

This doesn’t address whether Devils are themselves balanced of course.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Very well-reasoned. Good work!

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

I dont like the fact that if someone is lucky enough to get left alone for a bit they can grow their gem income exponentially and/or produce a devil factory of scary proportions.

I think exponential/quadratic growth is not a good thing in a fantasy game that doesn't scale well past turn 60 or so. Who wants to see Doom Horrors getting summoned 1 or even 2 per turn? Who wants to see an army of 120 devils wiped out at great cost to return completely regenerated a turn later? Even worse, who wants to fight their way through an mile-wide mass of vampires which respawns every turn no matter how often you kill it and keeps growing to boot?

The worst part is there are essentially only 3 or 4 ROI quadratic/exponential growth strategies that really pay off: clamming, fetishing, soul contracts, and vampire lords. That doesnt exactly give the game a lot of depth, or a much of an nteresting end game... in a 17 player game SOMEONE is going to carry off one or more of these strategies more that likely and, assuming some level competetance, dominate because of it.

Those empires that had to fight tooth and nail to survive and could not put the neccessary resources into clamming or whatever, get steamrolled.

Eliminating these strategies would surely result in a more balanced game.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

If one nation gets left alone until turn 60 while everyone expends resources fighting, they will be way ahead anyway. Whether it is that they have the prime artifacts, the unique summons (since theirs aren't dying off), they have castled (having nothing else to do with gold), they have set up the hard to get to spells (wishing, tartarians, etc.), they have taken all the indies and the CC'd player territories, searched their sites more thoroughly, have more mages because they didn't die off, have more gems because they weren't lost in battle, have better provinces because they weren't raided/pillaged, you name it.

As far as eliminating strategies, this might lead to a more balanced game because it is much easier to balance simplicity and the more strategies you eliminate, the simpler the game is. And a fine, balanced, simple game is quite fine and enjoyable at times...I just don't think that's why most people like Dom2. No offense but getting rid of strategies entirely is, imo, not a good idea.

- Kel

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Right. There's a word for what it'd make the game: BORING.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

No way. If you've gone 60 turns without attacking anyone, you're most likely irrelevant. You're going to lose to the two or three other nations that have been taking all the land and are three times as large as you are. Unless you're playing with newbies or on a HUGE map, or some other strange setting.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

I'm not sure what you base this on. Theory? I have maybe 12 MP games going right now, in none of which do I play (ewww!) Ulm. In at least 3, I forged the unique hammer. In 4 or 5, I casted Forge of the Ancients - as Man, as Pangaea, as Vanheim, as Jotuns, at a minimum. A number of those games included Ulm - in one, my impoverished (but Forged) Man was just betrayed, backstabbed, ambushed, by a very rich powerful Ulm. Ulm often tends to use their earth gems for : forging, and for conjuring Earth Kings etc.

It all really depends on the player's research strategy, and just as much upon luck in finding magic sites. When I have a nature nation with 1/3 the income in nature as my next lowest income - I'm not casting the big nature spells. (And yes, I'm in that situation in several games. No nature for Pangeaa and Man, no air for either Vanheim or Caelum, etc.)

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Not necessarily. Posit a small map - 80 provinces, 6 nations. If one nation acquires 10 provinces - less than average - but isn't fighting until turn 60, it's quite possibly ahead of the game. Another nation might have 20 provinces - but has spent most of its gold, and gems, on troops and magic items which are dead and gone.

Others have 5-15, say. The nation that has built its strength undisturbed is almost certainly better than those others, even the ones with 15.

I'm half in agreement with you - the way the game is, land is power. If you have 20 provinces to my 10, all other things being equal, you're likely going to win.

Clams, fetishes, etc, are simply a mechanism whereby a nation with less territory can attempt to balance the scales. The conqueror is using her gems to forge weapons and summon monsters; the lurker is saving those gems to use in major spells, major forgings, and also possibly using the gems as an investment instead of spending them right away.

Both strategies (in a hundred flavors, including Spam) can work. And as Arryn and Kel both said - getting rid of strategies is a bad thing, makes the game boring. If this wasn't the case, we could all play Chinese Checkers, with the understanding that the winner was Dog. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Yeah . The worst thing is that clamming together with wishing gives you access to everything then . You can wish for a bit blood to get then the blood autosummons started , can wish the unique SCs you want in endless amounts etc. etc.
So once it comes to real lategame the nations who can't wish because they have no good astral mages + couldn't clamhoard well are severely disadvantaged .

And before especially the devilhoarding is evil .

After about turn 50-60 normally the ability to use one or more of these hoard strategies with exponential growth is the most important thing .
Furthermore normally nations don't get too big that quick and if they do they fight for lots of turns against their neighbors so they are actually weakened .

Especially Caelum + Abysia are here probably a problem because they are so strong in early game already too .

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

There are easy and simple solutions to your problems. Fiddle with the game settings and victory conditions, use smaller maps, attack players before strategies with 10 turn investement returns pay off.

If you continously play on huge maps while letting other players grow at their own pace do not be shocked if strategies with delayed investment return pays off. If you do not like it, play on smaller maps and use victory settings that encourage more agressive play etc.


Boron: I am pleased to see that you have been convinced to use punctuation, trying to decipher your post earlier was a hassle.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Well, most MP games...well, let me rephrase, most MP games that start here, *are* huge maps so maybe my experience is tainted by that. However, even without a huge map, you still have a lot of situations where you pick up land without being 'disturbed' by other players. Aside from the fact that you can clean up every indie province, you can also clean up territories from players who get thrashed and go computer control next to you. Heck, even if they don't go CC, you can still take a bunch of territory from them. On top of that, your territory will be substantially better than theirs, pound for pound, as yours will be more thoroughly site searched, castled and unpillaged.

Start a game with 3 people. Let the first two go to war while the third just takes indies and builds power. It's not a sure bet but my money is on the third guy.

- Kel

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

This is not good game mechanics, period. If the solution to a Mictlan devil factory is "gang up on Mictlan early" then that's broken. If the solution to runaway economies is to play on small maps, then that's broken. The game doesnt scale!

What if I want to play a game on a huge map that doesnt become a clamming competition after turn 30-40? Short of a house rule I can't: there is NO POSSIBLE ALTERNATE STRATEGY.

Its not a question "letting" them grow at their own pace. in a 17 player game, SOMEONE will manage it, and that player will win regardless of who won all the hard-fought wars in the middle game.

So there is no incentive to fight except to shoot cripples and snatch territory. You certainly don't want to risk an evenly matched conflict becuase that will simply cripple you.

It would be more interesting to me if magic sites and powerful summons etc. did not devalue so quickly as the game progresses. It would be interesting to see armies of national troops still relevant in the late game.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

In the case of Soul Contracts, a mod could also be used to alter the effect of the item, if you think such a change is needed. As I do not think we can currently mod magic items (I haven't checked under 2.13 though), the solution would imply a weakening of the Devils themselves, and a change of the cost of the "Bind Devil" spell.

The Soul Contract will still be a long term investment, but it would then take longer to pay back, while making direct summons cheaper as well. The actual changes are left to you, depending on your mileage. Sure, a mod will unlikely be widely used, but it should do just as well as a house rule in this case. And if magic items can currently be modded, it would be much easier to do something along these lines (the same reasoning would go with clams and the like, but it would be harder to do it with an indirect change).

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

I havent really been following the conversation but it sounds like another "if its not head-to-head fair then its broke" discussion. ou are saying that if a strategy is offered in response to a strategy that its not an answer?

And arent nations like Marignon and TienChi also solutions to devils? (any nations with high priests)

You are talking about Atlantis using clams, correct? On a large map, what about the other large-map strategies. The ones that dont get a "fair play" on small maps. Pangaea sneak, Man air-drops, Caelum checkerboard, Arcos stand-and-think? Surely those offer some challenge to the clammers.

Your games have 17 people using the same strategy? No wonder you have a problem with balance issues.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Broken? Just because the way doesn't play the way you want on larger maps do not mean that it is broken. The game setup parameters are intended to have gameplay effects, obviously all strategies will not be equally effective with all setups. This doesn't mean the game is broken. It just means that all strategies are not optimal in all setups, which is both desirable and very hard to avoid.


What if I wan't to keep the cake and eat it? Short of regurgitating it up again I can't: THERE IS NO POSSIBLE STRATEGY.

Also I believe you are overstating the clam potency.

I fail to see why this is particular to large game and what it has to do with soul contracts and their balancee and why it is a bad thing, it seems like entirely reasonable and indeed desirable state of affairs.

While you might object to the speed at which this happens I do not see how anyone can argue with that delayed investment payoffs should payoff. Research etc need to yield significant results, or no one would bother with it. Also, as has been pointed out by various other posters, some players enjoy the presence and dominance of the high end troops and spells.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

And the people who don't, like me, play small maps ( like Karan with 17 players! ), and we all go home happy. Quit whining. So maybe the game isn't perfectly balanced, but it is one of the best games I have ever played, simply because there are so many strategies. Eliminating long-term strategies would do nothing but take away from why this game is fun.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Do they? I dont know!! I cant understand how they would. Massive gem income gives you freedom of action without significant constraints... seems like a no-brainer to me!

Well if there are counter-strategies then I'd love to hear them in detail, since I would prefer not to have to clam like a madman just to keep up.

I dunno... can you really NOT clam and survive in a game that is certainly going to Last more that 50-60 turns? I mean out of 17 maybe not all of them will use that strategy but the winner at the end of the game WILL be a someone who has implemented one or more of these investment strategies.

I enjoy that too, but I think a GOOD game is one where players are forced to make DIFFICULT decisions with regards to the use of their limited resources. If you have ivnestment strategies that allow for exponential growth, but a) there is not equal opportunity to use them and b) the game doesnt continue to scale as your economy grows, then all the high end magic and summons etc become massively devalued.

Re: Are devils worth 7 blood each?
 

Does not compute. If you play on a large map you must pursue a long term strategy of clamming/fetishing/blood stoning/soul contracting. Doesnt sound like "so many strategies" to me. Sounds like, effectively, only 4, which are all slight variants on the same strategy... and really you should be implementing all four.

I guess there is some strategy in what you DO with all your gem/devil income, but not much (mostly empower to cast wish). When you have no hard decisions to make, there is not much strategy involved.

If you play on a SMALL map you should STILL pursue a clamming strategy as it will ensure your final victory if you come out of the dogfight alive, although I TOTALLY AGREE that in this case it is much harder to do because you SHOULD be in conflict much earlier and more continuously.