edit: Sorry, OT
(Of course fun gameplay has nothing to do with MM. Some MM can be fun, it's only the repetitive actions that could be automated that's bad.
Fixing the MM thing doesn't stop with clams, everything where you a forced to do a repetitive action just to stay competitive should be changed imo)
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Originally Posted by Squirrelloid
I have to agree with K on at least one point, its the tendency of people to Turtle which leads to unfun gameplay.
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Yes, you are right. However that's not due to the player's character (genuine turtlers won't survive into the late game, with gem gens or without, if only for the reason that the weakest looking nation is often on the receiving end of the dogpile). Let's look at some late game facts:
1) Taking a single province means 1% or 2% of the enemies income go to you
2) except for discount sites, which are not a good strategic option as they can either be hidden (summon something, move it away, don't call your mages D5 (*), don't build special forts...) or defended just by concentrating forces and exploiting turn 1 or turn limit defender advantage.
3) Loosing on of your "big guns" >= loosing 10 raiding parties.
So what do you do?
You don't use nuclear weapons on peasant villages, so even if you are on the offensive you use the cheapest thing that reliably routs the PD and keep your SCs and SC counters in reserve to drop on the enemies counteroffensive.
That's all fine if you are fighting an enemy who moves around his SCs or giant armies without expecting you to pick them off one by one. Or when you have a huge advantage through artifacts, uniques, recruitable SCs, or simply income (Well, I guess clams have been widely used in the 3 years the game is out. Only now everyone knows about them).
But when fighting a player of equal skill and situation this is rather a mess.
So, how to fix lategame?
Add a operational component into the game. Make the map so that strategical goals can be formulated (when I take this mountain range I will deprive the enemy of 90% his earth-gem income and his low prot thugs look rather poor), forcing both the attacker and the defender to bring their real forces into play (i.e. it shouldn't come down to just having to concentrate on a single province, it shouldn't need taking 90% of the enemies territory, more like 10-20%, and it should be worthwhile - i.e. research and magic diversification should be hard enough that noone can just change his strategy spontaneously).
(*) Sorry mate, you know who you are.
