[Squirrelloid]

Version 0.03 is in the works, stuff to expect:

LA Ulm - consistency update. Since LA Ulm is cursed, i've given them much more modest mr (baseline mr 11 for basic troops/commanders) - their resistance to magic is fading as they pursue blood magic. (Also, LA Ulm is vastly superior to its predecessors, so it didn't really need much of a boost).

Machaka - Two things become apparent when you look at Machaka. First, its theme is 'Giant Spider!', which is a pretty lame theme when you think about it. Second, there is almost no African mythology or traditional belief here, nor any historical basis, its some weird exoticized idea of 'darkest africa'. This is pretty shameful. That the nation is pretty thin is no surprise based on this - there's only so much you can do with 'Giant Spider!' (although there *could* be a national summon or something...). I'm really tempted to do a content update. (Honestly, I'd almost prefer to scrap the whole nation and start over!) And there are parts of the theme I simply can't figure out, like what 'darkest africa' is doing with platemail... seriously, can anyone explain that to me?

However, for v0.03, expect some slight tweaks to Machaka, but there's only so much that can be done with what's currently available.

Summons - The healer ability is made easier to access. Faerie Queen's have theirs improved to 100, Treelords find a use as Healer 100s as well, and Naiads (who have lost focus in the post-clam world) gain Healer 50.

Spells
Fate of Oedipus - removed from the game. It creates a bad play dynamic and causes Eyes of God to never be cast.

Gift of Health - I was going to make it harder to cast and substantially increase the cost, but some discussion on IRC led me to decide to only slightly increase the cost (to 60n). In play terms, this might delay the casting of GoH slightly, but the major effect will be to make it more vulnerable to Dispel. It really was too cheap for what it did, however, even if you ignore the interaction with Tartarian Gate.

Awaken Treelord - reduced to 30n. Even with the improved healing they still aren't that good. Compare to other things you could be spending your nature gems on: lamia queens and faerie queens.

Dispel - reduced to 10s. Dispel is already a bad mechanic, and the only way to fix that is to make dispel cheap enough that it might be worth tossing one off to test a global. At 10s it will tend to discourage minimal globals (because someone might just choose to test a global at that price), but won't really effect globals with any real investment in them (say >+10 gems) since the investment in the Dispel necessary to test that becomes really expensive. Especially in the post-clam world where pearls are much less common.

Thinking about tweaking another nation or two before considering it finished. Please do take this opportunity to share your thoughts on the above.