What, a reasonably balanced post about clams, cheese, and wine? What is this, Usenet or Fox News? (A fair and balanced look at prostituting the political process.
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A few game options would indeed be good. Blood is definately imbalanced right now with certain game settings - Quantum's Twilight of Magic games, for instance, have sites set to 5% or 10% tops, but blood keeps rolling in. A switch to modify blood would definately be a Good Thing, as it would simply balance blood nations the same as site frequency does already. ( Not sure, but I think that modifying blood hunting by the site frequency itself might be better - if, after all, there is a very dismal amount of magic sites, people (and kings, and gods) are going to protect their virgins that much more, as the main source of magic. Alternatively, some 'patriots' will 'protect' the virgins from becoming blood sacrifices through time honored methods.
Gem generators are more complicated, as some nations are arguably much more affected then others. Atlantis, some say, lives or dies by its clams. But on the other hand - Caelum can eak out a few fire gems by fetishes that it would have a hard time getting otherwise. Hrm. No sympathy for Caelum, eh?
Machaka is another case in point - without the ability to bring in extra fire gems, it is arguably hosed.
But still - if it's a game option, then people can play around with these options, if need be avoiding games that either say "no gem generators" or "1/2 price sale on gem generators, reasonable credit".