[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by PyroStock

If you only use 10n shields then you've locked yourself into quite the little hell of a predictable box. Good is relative depending on what you're up against and what you have available.

Vine Shield >> charcoal shield, lantern shield, gold shield, etc... This isn't even really a point of discussion. There is also no counter for vine shield, so who cares if you're predictable?

The next best shield is arguably Eye Shield.

Do you always resort to strawmen? Even on your 1st response to new posters in a thread??? I would be curious why you find all death forges weak, but if your strawmen are any indication of your level of civil discussion then nevermind and goodbye. In short, I never said that.

Where's the strawman? Strawmen reach a faulty conclusion because they depend on a mis-characterization. I made a factual claim: death gems being already useful is no reason for another use to be worse. And the logical conclusion: worse uses won't see play. Look, death gems have a value. That value is set by their best uses. Any use whose value is less than that is not going to get played. This isn't a strawman, its basic economics.

(Now, value can vary depending on situation a little bit, but something that has very situational uses and thus is unlikely to be used more than once in that fashion still has a pretty low utility. Wraithsword currently has *no* situation in which its worthwhile).

I didn't say all death forges were weak, I said no death forge should be weak because it won't see play. So if any death forging is weak it needs to be improved or it might as well be removed from the game.

Now, whether you interpret that as a direct rebuttal of your urge for caution remark is up to you. It doesn't change the factual nature of my statements.

Hey lets make Stygian Paths work like Astral Travel, because that means 1 less Tartartian too! I'm not convinced by your argument that death is very strong so lets make it even stronger via diversity. In fact by less nature gems spent on shields you can GoR more Tartarians (since now you have your "just as competitive" 2-handed sword).

Now who's using strawman arguments?

Stygian paths may need a little buffing, but hardly needs its functionality changed. Possibly needs to be made a little cheaper. It certainly sees occasional use at present (unlike wraithsword), and has niche uses (its one of the few ways to move a Sphinx, for example), so there are times where its situational value is high enough to warrant spending d gems on it.

I would still take a single-handed weapon + vine shield over the proposed wraithsword.

And conveniently, you apparently don't see the advantage of gaining 1 mage turn (no shield forge needed) as insignificant since you ignored that point.

It is insignificant. When you have 50 or 100 mages, what's one more mage turn?

Early game its an issue, but very few nations are equipping piles of thugs/SCs in the early game (and those nations generally really want shields - ie, vanheim, eriu, etc...).

Thanks for your opinion Squirrelloid, but your ideal CBM with death being awesome at everything just because it is awesome at many things doesn't sound appealing to me.

Well, ideally i'd prefer if the value of all gems was equally high, but CBM is not going to make sufficient changes to the game to make water gems as valuable as death gems. The game, even as balanced by CBM, does have implicit values for every gem type, and barring significant rebalancing to change those values, there is no point in assuming anything but the existing values. Basically, when making small modifications to the game, you're a price taker in terms of the value of gold, gems, and resources. If you deviate from the value already dictated by the game, either your changes are overpowered or will never see play, depending on which direction you deviated.