[Calahan]

Don't forget that another problem with gem gens in general was it led to the bad playing mechanic of being able to conquer all of your opponents lands, but in doing so only managing to cut his gem income by a tiny percentage.

And this, combined with the huge defender advantage of having 1st combat action a player gets during fort storms (especially with several wish casters on hand for master enslave spam), led to many situations where actually capturing your opponents provinces didn't get you anywhere near defeating your opponent, regardless of how many provinces he had. And any sort of gem income advantage you had over your foe didn't matter much when storming, since you could have double your enemies gem income, but easily lose 10x the gem investment when trying to storm forts.

I am no lover of the changes CBM 1.7 has made, but gem gens in general were bad for large scale games, and so did have to go IMO (although I guess probably not much of a problem for small scale games. But I've never played small scale games so I wouldn't know). Even game rules, that for example, allow one clam per turn # would mean raid-immune gem income of 175 every other turn from wishing alone by turn 50. (and good players would easily be able to safeguard their gem gens from assassinations spells, remote damage attacks, Armageddon's etc. So relying on them to deprive your enemy of the gem gen income is not a real option in games involving proper players).

I know I will never play another game with gem gens again (although this is just my own personal preference of course)