[Graeme Dice]

Originally Posted by Kuritza

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.

Then maybe you need to learn to play better? Because every turn spent fighting when somebody else isn't fighting is another turn of income they've turned into castles and research mages that you haven't. So that could quite possibly be why you're not able to win. And really, if a player who is playing to rush can't beat somebody who is playing for a long term victory, then the balance is broken anyways.

Really. Nobody managed to win for Bandar Log even with clams.

Nobody has reported a win is what you mean. But then, nobody has reported a win with Vanheim either, and they are certainly not a weak nation, and only a single win has been reported for Ashdod. Clearly we can't really rely on the list of reported wins.

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.

Now you're bringing mages into it. I thought you said that it was impossible to overcome poor national troops, and yet, now you're telling me that good combat mages can do so. Why don't you think through your statements before you make them?

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?

In any game that lasts for sufficiently long, the winner will be the person who has forged more clams. There's some small caveats to that, given that some nations can survive wishes for armageddon better than others, but those aren't really that important.

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!

Are you, in your extreme arrogance, not perhaps aware that there are plenty of people who have been playing Dominions for twice as long as you've been a member of this forum, and that these people are the primary ones behind the removal of gem generators? I've seen them ruin games for five years now, and I was ecstatic to see them finally removed.

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

Please don't insult my intelligence by suggesting that you aren't trying to tell others how they should play the 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.

No, they aren't horrible to make. The micromanagement comes in the fact that you typically put them on scouts, who will sit with the hide order, and require you to press 'n' more than a hundred times in a single province. If you hold it down too long, thanks to there not being a previous button, you have to go through it all over again to make sure you aren't missing any commanders. Blood stones require you to move slaves between scouts unless you pay your anti-micro tax and build labs everywhere. Then there are fever fetishes, which are micromanagement hell.

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.

Are you aware that ignoring your opponent's arguments is usually considered to mean that you are conceding that they are correct? C'Tis and R'Lyeh have both won just as many games as Marignon in that survey. 44 games is far too small of a sample size to pull a proper distribution out of a dataset where there are are 23 possible victorious nations.

Personally I'd be happy to play Bandar Log against you on, say, Urgaia. But, since you've already indicated that you don't play the game anymore (Though why you hang around the forum then I don't know), I guess we'll have to skip that.