[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
Sadly, tons of astral gems *will* stop Astral Corruption, and it's also very expensive and a very high research level. Also, it does nothing to the clams you already have.

Tons of astral gems may not be available to an aspiring clam hoarder, if most of his astral gems have then gone back to water gems to make clams. As Astral Corruption is a blood spell, it uses blood slaves, which are far easier to acquire in large quantities until well into the advanced stages of clam hoarding: Getting 100+ slaves/turn by turn 15 is perfectly possible, whereas by that time, a clam hoarder is probably only barely starting to begin his hoarding.

It does, also, indirectly affect the use of clams: A clam hoarder will suddenly find his aspiring stocks of astrals greatly limited in use if any attempt to do anything with them results in the offending mage being eaten by a horror. Even if he attempts a dispel, failure results in the offender being eaten by a horror, and blood slaves are still more available than astrals. Astral Corruption is also an L7 blood spell, whereas Wish is an L9. You'll have access to Corruption before he can start wishing for doom horrors.

Of course, Graeme has a point that Mictlan and Abysia have the easiest access to this, but as Zen states, any living nation can be a blood nation. It's simply going to be a fact of life that the same countermeasures aren't equally available to everyone. That's why nations are stronger against some nations and weak against others.

I still feel that if there is any problem (and not just insufficiently aggressive play against a turtle strategy), it is that water magic doesn't do enough other worthwhile things, perhaps partly because cold immunity is so common. It's easy to find other uses for astral gems, but not so easy to find other uses for water gems.

Amen.