[Stormbinder]

[quote]Originally posted by PhilD:

quote:

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Originally posted by Stormbinder:

Originally posted by Zen:
[qb]

How long are your games? Are you playing 4-player games on the World map, or what?

I mean, your initial gem production is 5/turn. Even if it's 5 Water, this means you get to make one Clam every 2 turns, initially. For even, say, 80% of your gem income to be item-produced, assuming your sites produce, say, 10 per turn (rather small), requires 50 gem-producing items. That's 50 turns of using your natural production (assuming it's all of the right types) to turn into items (500 gems), meaning those items will have produced roughly 1200 gems by that time. That's investing your whole production into them, plus 50 turns of a mage, plus (currently) 25 commanders holding the items, which you're not likely to send on the field as random kill-me commanders - which means "lost" upkeep.

Anything faster, means your current return is smaller - because the already-produced items will have produced fewer gems.


If, during those 50 turns, none of your opponents has taken advantage of your sinking gems into slow-return investments, your map is too big. Or maybe your playgroup is too focused on this being the only viable strategy, and isn't otherwise expanding/attacking fast enough.

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I am sorry but your math is completely wrong PhilD. Just few most obvious examples:

You keep refering to "initail production of 5 gems per turn". What it has to do with clams hoarding? Obviously you are going to search for avalailable water and astral sites _before_ you are going to start real clam hoarding. At can be done with water2/astral1 mages, for 2 and 3 gems, both easely available. And even few clams will will supply you with all astral gems that you'll need for Astral Probe spell, or for Archaic Records later in the game when you are swiming in astrals from your pearls.


The argument about "high upkeep cost" on commanders hoarding clams is even worse. First of all what prevents you from giving clams to your reseachers, as everybody doing in MP? Or to your bloodhunting scouts/whatever? This way you lose nothing on upkeep. But even if you do have to hire special commanders for it later on, what prevents you from hiring 20 gp scouts and give them 2 clams each? Each scout cost 1.3 gp per turn in upkeep, and it'll supply you with 2 astrals per turn. Clearly 1.3 gp is nothing comparable to 2 astrals every turn, so it shouldn't be even seriously considered when deciding if clams are unbalanced.


And I am not even talking about sites bonuses to forging, or having few dwarven hammers used to produce clams every turn. Yes, hammer is not cheap, being 20 earth gems, but it's a long time investment. By themself Hammers are totally fine and cool itme, but when applied to already severely unbalanced 10water gems clams, making them 7 water gems each...

Sure, there is no quarantee that you'll find site with bonus production, but they are not _that_ rare, and they means the return of investent on _all_ your calms is 8 turns now instead of 10, since obviously you are going produce all your clams only on that site now for 8 water gems each. And that's even without Dwarven hammers.

More arguments could be writen, but I think that should be enough.

[ April 02, 2004, 08:25: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]