[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Micah

The alchemy cost that you claim didn't exist in vanilla is built into the basic game economy. One pearl = 2 gems once you unlock wish, which was fairly trivial with clams.

I never said alchemy never existed. However, to say that cmb didn't nerf astral because wish exists is ignoring the 2/3'rds of the game before you *unlock* wish.

And most positions are lost WAY before you have wish.

Having to give up other options in order to get boosters is due to the tighter gem economy in general, not anything specific to S.

We agree on the facts. Gems are tighter as there are no gem generators. And more specifically S gems are tighter, as there are no clams. As you have no gems, each S action you must take becomes more expensive.

Instead of having 30 astral income on turn 20 - fairly easy in a vanilla game - you might have 10. That makes your availability of doing things like magic duel, gate etc much more expensive.

Clever little bait and switch there with your question about R'lyeh. R'lyeh, being aquatic and (I believe) having W cap income is, of course, hurt by clams being removed, since they get stuck with a pile of crappy W gems at a higher rate than other nations. They might also be a more gem-dependent nation in general, and obviously have a hard time breaking into blood, none of this translates into a direct nerf to astral magic.

There is *no* bait and switch. You arguing astral magic didn't get weaker is ridiculous. Pick an astral nation. R'lyeh, Pythium. Kailasa. Whatever. EVERY single astral nation became weaker, by the nerf to gem generators.

In Rlyeh's case, having S mages and battle scripts and rituals that require S gems means the cost of doing those operations went up. Its not even arguable with a straight face.

Sure, you can alchemize two gems to make your make your pearl. now your magic duel is costing you *two* gems.

a) does not apply to water, nature.
b) is not as commonly expressed in bloodstones and fever fetishes
c) is not the only relevent metric. Summons such as rudras, siddhe's etc, and forging like ROW do not depend on ratios but rather on raw numbers. Reducing the raw numbers of gems delays the introduction of these items and summons into the game.
Pearls increase your raw gem production (invisibly); and were a good investment. Strategies which therefor require a lot of pearls are therefor strongly affected.

your 3 points: A is specifically covered by alchemy,

Alchemy has nothing to do with the point.

B is a side point,

So say you. Argued without support.

and C is the reason you're looking at this wrong. If C dictates that something is a bad investment now then it was a bad investment before, you just had enough gems to not notice...if you've got a billion dollars shelling out 20 bucks for a happy meal isn't gonna even register to you, and is probably worth it instead of haggling over the price and wasting your time, but you still got ripped off. "Strategies that require a lot of pearls" basically boils down to "strategies that are inefficient but require less micro due to using fewer bigger, but ultimately less cost effective units."

Ridiculous argument. So according to you we can just remove all astral gems from starting nations - since according to you gem income is irrelevent.

You're wrong on the face of it and trying puerile arguments to support it. You're the one that has it backwards.

Law of supply and demand says that if you remove supply, the item becomes more expensive. Removing a supply of pearls makes EVERY item purchased with pearls more expensive. So rudras became MORE expensive because you removed pearls. NOT the *inferior* value of rudras got revealed.

But even foraking that argument. The alchemy arguement is ridiculous - you can alchemize with generators as well as you can alchemize without them.

Forsaking *that* arguement - the facts are simple. With gem generators, you are more likely to turn pull of turn 20 gates.
you are more likely to pull of turn 30 ROW.

Every single astral option is now deferred due to lower 'cash flow', or scrutinized more closely due to 'higher cost'.

... and even if it took a slight hit it's too minor to warrant all this screaming about a supposed S nerf.

As for 'screaming' this was my entire original quote;

CBM made astral a lot weaker, not having clam whoring for wishing, AN etc.

Hardly screaming.