[Arryn]

Zen has already, in various threads, quite succinctly expressed himself as to how effective these strategies are. I agree with him.

Of all the strategies, the one that's IMO the most blown all out of any semblence to reality is clams. They simply are not a make-or-break proposition. Other factors in your strategy are, by far, more important to winning. All clams do is make the rest of your strategy (assuming you have a viable one) a bit easier to accomplish. In my AAR, at ~turn 40, I'm building clams as fast as I can, yet they are not a deciding factor in how I'm conducting my campaign, despite providing (thus far) 2/3 of my per-turn astral income. As Zen said, they are something you do as an investment for much later on in the game. In the case of my AAR, they'll start to really matter around turn 45-60, yet I'm already almost at a point in the game where I cannot be stopped (by the AI), even if all the AI nations were to gang up on me. By turn 50 the game will be pretty much decided. After that it'll be a long (very long) process of mopping up the rather large Orania map. So, as you can see, by the time clams become a decisive factor, the decision has already been made without them. They just hasten the inevitable (assuming the rest of your plan works).