[Stormbinder]

First you are forgeting Jotunheim.

Originally posted by Zapmeister:

Ah yes, the Skratti are blood-2, water-2 aren't they.

Yes they are, plus one random pick.

But that adds weight to my argument.

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.

Second - all I was saying is that is that amazons are quite common forest province, with mages that can be 5 times cheaper than your national water 2 mages

But you also agreed that maintenance wasn't a major issue.

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.

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.

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.


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.