[Kuritza]

Originally Posted by Graeme Dice

And with gemgens, it's exactly the same, with the caveat that the underwater races don't need the same number of provinces because they are harder to attack. Having more provinces with gem generators simply means that I'm going to be making more gemgens than you. The game breaks utterly when one can leverage incomes of hundreds of gems per turn.

No, not true, or rather not always true. Expansion IS important (every turn that I am not at war with somebody feels like a wasted turn once indies are eaten), of course, but if I invested more in diversification I can get an upper hand over somebody who invested everything into expansion.
Not true with CBM 1.6 anymore.

Really? Nobody has ever managed it? Nobody has ever won while playing C'Tis? Caelum? Jotunheim? Any of the majority of the nations who have average quality troops?

Really. Nobody managed to win for Bandar Log even with clams. Ctis and Jotunheim have OK troops, not to mention that most victories we know of were won with gemgens. MA Caelum has awesome combat mages while EA Caelum has thugs / combat mages.
But actually, I was responding to Baaltz's comment that somebody might show me the power of monkey troops.

Originally Posted by Graeme Dice

Look, I'm happy to play in one or two games a year where generators decide the outcome, just as long as I get to play R'lyeh, C'Tis or Bandar log in each case. Because that essentially means that if I can convince my neighbours to act as a buffer between hostile nations and myself
for just long enough, then I'm going to win the game by forging clams.

Ha ha! Go win with Bandar Log. So far nobody did, over how many years? )))
And, my oh my, not all games are won by Ctis and Rlyeh either. Not even by MA Pythium, although it kind of dominates MA. Maybe thats because clams are not the MAIN factor?

You could start your own games you know.

Then they will come and say OMG, dont ever start a game without CBM 1.6, vanilla is so ridiculously unbalanced, I've read it on the forums!

Yes. It changed the game in a dramatic way for the better.

For you, perhaps. But not for me. And deciding for others is like playing a God.

People want to play with it both because the balance between nations is better and because it removes a huge amount of mandatory micromanagement from the late game.

Right now, it has worse balance between nations (MA Oceania without clams? haha) and gemgens did NOT add to micromanagement that much, its a nonsense. I played this game too, remember? To make clams is to give several extra orders per turn. How many clams are you forging?.. 3? 4? Thats 6 to 8 extra clicks.

Would you really choose to play a middle age game as Marignon with gemgens enabled? In a game where C'Tis, Oceania, R'lyeh and Bandar Log are your opponents? After all, you have better troops than all of them, and if you really prefer the strategic game with gemgens you should be happy to play any nation in such an environment.

Sure, I'd make a God who can summon a naiad to clam for me, and rush Bandar Log. And, oh wonder, MA Marignon has won 2 games in HoF *with gemgens*, while Bandar Log has won none.
Thanks for proving my point.

Originally Posted by vfb

I think it's kind of ironical that you're complaining here about people not playing vanilla, but then you bailed on "Clam Shortage" because it included the vanilla nations LA Ermor and LA R'lyeh.

Oh well. I sort of regret it, but you must understand - I'm rather tired of Ermor/Rlyeh alliances in games with many new players. Setsumi was the last drop for me.
Ermor is even worse in CBM anyway, since, you see, troops are more important there.