[Calahan]

Ok I'll probably regret this, but work is slow and I'm feeling lucky. So what the hell, lets give educating players yet another go, as maybe this time something will get through to someone... Prepare for a wall of text like you've never seen before...


First off, while the theory behind gem gens is sound, as it's a gameplay mechanic that has been seen in numerous strategy games, and in several of them implemented well, in Dominions it doesn't work in its current form. Not even slightly. As the basic gameplay mechanic is "investment", which means to invest a proportion of resource X now, to hopefully get a ROI (Return On Investment) later in the game so that you get back "X + profits for rest of game".

But whereas in games such as Civilization it is implemented well via city improvements like Marketplaces or Libraries (so invest X resources in A to get a 25% boost in output of B), the way it is implemented in Dominions has several flaws. Some of them huge.

(all Civ comparisons are I-IV, not touched V)

Some problems with the concept

1 - There is no real limit on how many gem gens you can create. (ok, 50 per turn, but that is not a good limit)

So whereas in Civ you can only build one Marketplace per city, in Dominions you can build unlimited Marketplaces in every city. Do you really need your hand held to realise how stupid that would be to game balance?

2 - There is no barrier to entry on where you can build them.

Again whereas in Civ, even if you could build unlimited Marketplaces (so lets say every turn you can build and complete one Marketplace per city), you still need an actual city to build it in. So if you wanted to increase production you would have to go out and gain more land to build more cities. In Dominions all you need is another mage with the right paths, which are easy enough to summon up. You literally never have to leave a single fort to ramp up production to maximum (ie. such as can happen when all your lands have been invaded).

3 - There is practically no barrier to entry to creating gem gens.

This is one of my personal favourites. As one of the common arguments in favour of gem gens is that...

"if they are so powerful, then why don't nations that can forge them with national mages dominate the game? As if they are so powerful then logically Kailasa, Pangaea, the Niefs etc. would win every game, and nations that can't forge them with their mages wouldn't stand a chance. But this doesn't happen, therefore gem gens are not that powerful"

That is just about the biggest load of crap ever. If ONLY nations that had the right paths on their national mages could forge them, then this argument would likely carry more weight (such as if you could mod in national items the same way you can with spells). But any nation that takes just W1N1S4 on their Pretender can summon Naiads (using boosters) which gets you Clams.

So any nation that gets a good start, can summon a Naiad and hey presto, your clamming. So nations still have to be able to compete in the early-mid game, which some of the native gem geners are not always good at, leading to the obvious consequences. But nations without national gem gen forges can easily get a good start which enables them get what they need to start Clamming. Heck it wasn't uncommon to empower N1 tribe mages in Water to start clamming, as the up-front cost (50W) is easily recouped once the Clams start rolling in. (and this was a route several players took to get clams, even though in today’s gem scarcity days it sounds crazy to blow 50W on that)

So the pitiful barrier to entry on gem gens is another huge part of their problem, that and the fact ANY nation can forge them.

4 - Return on investment is way too quick, and initial investment required is too small

This is an argument against all the current pricing of gem increasing effects (especially globals, that all have a stupidly quick ROI), but with gem gens Fetishes pay for themselves in around 9 turns (or 6 if you pre-disease the carriers). Stones in around 9 (using 5.5:1 slave:gem ratio), and Clams in a crazy 7. That is all way too quick. And because the initial price is so low, it's almost never a bad idea to forge them at any point in the game. ie. If you had to pay an upfront cost of 110W+30N to get back 70 pearls in 7 turns time, then it's harder to come up with the initial cost, and you do have to think if the upfront fee can be spent better elsewhere. But if it's just an upfront fee of 11W+3N, then you don't even have to think about it. As an analogy....

Loads of people play national lotteries because they only cost 1$/£/Euro for a ticket with the chance to win a huge amount. So the upfront fee is easily small enough that it won't be missed when they don't win. But if tickets cost 10,000£/$/Euro for a prize that was 10,000 times bigger, then hardly anyone would play because they simply couldn't afford to risk losing such a high upfront fee. Even though the odds and prize ratios are the same.


Some problems on gameplay

5 - The defender advantage synergies too well with high Astral.

Clams means Astral, high Astral means Wish, Wish means access to more Wish casters, which means access to potentially unlimited Master Enslavers. If you have never played in a mid-large scale game which has gem gens, and with competent players, then IMO you are simply not qualified to comment on the effect they can have on the game. As storming forts against dozens of 1st round Master Enslavements is simply impossible. And because the defender goes first, there is nothing the attacker can do about it. And I know there will be players reading this that will say...

"Well then cast Flames from Afar/Murdering Winter/Assasian spells/Wish for Armageddon/etc. ie. Do whatever you can to kill what's in the fort."

Well good luck getting past all the Domes, and even when you do, good luck with killing fully kitted Seraphs with full immunities with whatever bag of tricks you care to try (as every important commander in the fort will have full immunities and gear to survive every method of killing them if playing against proper players). And then I know players will say "Well dom kill them then". Yeah, good luck with that as well when they can simply summon endless Juggernauts with their Clam income. And when I say Clam income, I am literally talking about games where players have had several hundred Clams. The most I think I remember seeing/hearing of was 700+. That sort of volume simply goes beyond breaking the game into smashing it existence into tiny particles.

There might come a time in the game where you can dom-kill someone who is forted up like in the above, by gaining 1-2 candles per turn over them. But when the game is already past 100 turns, and there are 100's of candles to remove, the game has long since gone past the point of being fun or enjoyable. And to continue is the very definition of painful gaming (and indeed many games ended in draws or undecided when they got to this stage)

6 - The income is hidden

Another huge problem is that the income from gem gens is hidden. So whereas in games without them you can get a fairly reliable picture of who the most powerful nation is by doing scouting and checking graphs (when they're on), with gem gens any nation could be more powerful than all the others combined. As 200+ Clams likely tops the income of all other provinces combined on a 150 province map. So an innocent nation with a dozen provinces could in theory be the top dog and is happily watching and growing whilst everyone leaves him alone thinking he's a nobody.

7 - They make conquering lands an irrelevance

Here is one of the biggest arguments against gem gens. In that once you are getting 80%+ of your gem income from gem gens, then who needs or cares about your lands? I've by no means played a wide variety of strategy games (either computer or board), but I can't think of any game where conquering all your opponents lands does nothing to either dent their power, or even stop them from getting more powerful. As there has to be consequences for losing all your lands, and there has to be ways to reduce/remove/ruin your opponents economic income trough successful warfare. But gem gens remove this vital strategic aspect from wars, unless of course you can get past all those Master Enslavers to capture the fort(s).

8 - They are Micromanagement hell

This is probably the biggest negative of all. Every proper game with proper players reaches a stage where dozens of mages need to be constantly equipped every turn with gems in order to be able to cast powerful spells should a battle occur. And when this happens the "Pool Gems" button of the user interface instantly becomes your worst enemy. As all the gems being generated need to be collected in order for them to be used, but if you use the Pool Gems button to do this you immediately remove all the essential gems from those battle ready mages that happened to be at labs. So this means you either have to use the Pool Gems button and then go around every mage in your empire giving all of them back the gems they need for battle (hope you've taken notes!). Or you have to go round all commanders carrying gem gens and individually transfer their gems from their inventory to the lab. Most serious players ended up choosing the latter, as the consequences for the former (ie. mages not having gems when needed) would often result in disaster. Especially so when talking about Returning/VoR/AM Casters. (ie. The Astral Pool button was the most untouchable, while also being the one you needed most)

And again, unless you've played in a game where you are literally spending hours each turn just to put gems into the lab then you are not qualified to have any opinion on gem gens. And if you haven't experienced this then you are honestly a very lucky person indeed. And please do yourself a massive favour and believe those of us who have gone through this unbelievable misery in many games, when we say that gem gens in their current form are broken beyond belief.


And before anyone even dares to mention it, having to spend all your time managing gem gens is not the price you pay for success. That sort of attitude really pisses me off as it's completely illogical and positively discourages a player from trying to succeed. It's the same as when a player is doing well in a game and needs to ask for delays or extended hosting to manage his (successful) empire, and some douche bag replies

"That's your own fault for doing so well. I think forcing you to rush turns is fair as it means you are more likely to make mistakes that gives me a chance to beat you" (ie. I can't beat you if you play properly; therefore my only hope is you make mistakes by not giving you enough time to play properly).

Any system that punishes success is strategically flawed. The barriers to success should be made the obstacle, and not punish the player for overcoming them. (as it should be up to the other players to bring the successful ones down, and not need the system do it for them)

9 - Games get stupid.

Once you've seen someone running around with dozens of S5 empowered Wraith Lords, and MLichs with 200+ HPs, then you know for certain that gem gens are just a joke, and allow players to stop even trying to play well, by giving them free reign to start doing stupid things. (which is not a good gameplay feature)


Right I'll end there because I am just getting very bored and fairly annoyed at having to explain so many obvious things. There are still further reasons why gem gens are bad, but someone else can take over from here if they want to. And if you still don't get why Gem Gens are bad then that's your own problem. Or maybe you can....

....go and organise a load of large scale games with Gem Gens with various other disbelievers. Play these type of games constantly until you get to the point where you are all highly skilled players. Then organise another bunch of large scale games with these skilled players, where most game are lasting over 100+ turns with multiple players having hundreds of Clams each. Then continue playing these games even though a single turn in any game is taking many hours to complete. As then and only then can you come back in 4-5 years time and give your opinion about Gem Gens based on actual experience from high level games. As if you do that then you will have recreated the MP history of Dominions 3 that has taken place on these forums, and maybe then you will understand why those who have been through all of that, or even just a part of it, have firmly concluded that Gem Gens ruin the game completely.


A few final points...

Gem gens might work in newb games or casual games where players either simply don't know or simply don't care what's going on ("I just Pool Gems, and if my mages die so what, it's only a game"). But if you believe that players generally try to improve at the game from playing (if they are new), or have even the slightest care about how they do (why invest any time in the game at all if you are happy to see it ruined later?) then just accept the word of those of use who have played the game a long time, and invest our time in trying to play to a certain level.

Also bear in mind that Clams are exactly twice as good as either Bloodstones or Fever Fetishes due to the Wish mechanics. So in all the above I am mostly talking about clams.

Crap players in crap games with other crap players know nothing about how proper games with proper players can play out if gem gens are available. So until you are good enough to understand why they ruin games, then just concentrate on playing without them, and accept the likely fact that you might not understand why until you are better at the game. Yes I am a Jerk. And yes I am an Elitist. So when you combine those two facts you get the obvious outcome of what position I am posting from.

Oh and in my experience any vets who argue in favour of gem gens, and I know they are out there, are either only interested in playing in newb games where they can abuse gem gens due to the lack of knowledge newbs will have about them (Hi Frank!), or they are simply incapable of playing the game unless they can horde gem gens (hi to all those regular players who coincidentally gave up totally once CBM 1.6 came out).

Everything is priced with Hammers, because the game is better with Hammers, I only intend to play games with Hammer, so therefore I am using Hammer prices. And people who claim Hammers have the same negative effects on gameplay that Gem Gens do are almost as clueless as those who say Gem Gens are fine. As there is no way they can be compared directly like people tend to do.


tl;dr - Just listen to players who have experienced it, and accept it when they say that Gem Gen items ruin the game.