Two Birds with One Stone Suggestion

[Scott Hebert]

Not to bring up Clams again, but..

One of the key points in the whole Clam debate is the relative lack of any Water-based Rituals of effectiveness, especially compared to Astral.

Well, here's an idea for a Water ritual that would make it much more useful:

5 Water Gems
Water-2 or -3
Enchantment-5 (or so; this can be tweaked)
Ritual

Target a province. One random non-artifact removable item in that province is stolen and placed on the casting mage. If the targeted province also has a lab, then items in the nation's lab inventory is also included in the pool to be stolen.

I believe the effect of this would be to start a magical 'tug-of-war' for control of Clams. Note that, late game, this isn't very effective because of the Dome spells. However, since it takes quite a while for Clamming to get out of hand, it's quite possible to stop it from ever getting off the ground, provided you know or can guess where the Clams are located.

The whole 'lab inventory' thing is included as a countermeasure, actually. Yes, you COULD steal a Clam of Pearls from that location, OR you might get the Bane Venom Charm that he has sitting in his labs for just this sort of occasion. If it isn't already, you might want to make sure that the Bane Venom Charm is non-removable. Though, IIRC its use in the Arena, it isn't removable.

Anyway, just my thoughts.

Scott

[LintMan]

Seems way overpowered. I'd use that spell to strip all the items off any enemy SC's, and to strip large armies of their Wine bags, leaving them starving. Even if the cost was made more in line with its power, stealing clams would be pretty low, priority-wise, because you would't be able to cast it enough to make a difference..

Also, the clam hoarder is likely far better equipped to spam this spell than his opponents would be, since he'd already have a good water gem income, and a bunch of water mages.

I'm not really an opponent of clams (within reason), but if you want a water-based ritual spell to combat clams, how about:
Salmonella- W7, 80 water gems- Global effect: Every clam holder has a 30% chance per clam per turn of getting diseased.

[Cohen]

You'll go to lose massed scouts ... point.
With fever fetish, you give it to scouts.
When scout has 1 hitpoint, remove it and give to a new scout.
2 x scout ...

This isn't very damage dealing ...

[Gandalf Parker]

Creative. but it doesnt feel very watery. more like an astral spell.

[ May 28, 2004, 00:05: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[PvK]

I still like my simple, sense-making, clam fix:

All the clams in the game only generate a maximum number of astral pearls equal to the number of sea provinces on the map. If the world holds more clams than seas, then only certain random clams chosen each month, will get pearls, up to that number.

Self-balancing, and scales with the map.

PvK

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by PvK:
All the clams in the game only generate a maximum number of astral pearls equal to the number of sea provinces on the map. If the world holds more clams than seas, then only certain random clams chosen each month, will get pearls, up to that number.

Nice. Except that in the pros and cons list, one of the things listed as an pro was that it was one of the few things Atlantis had going for it.

It made me think though. What if only a water-mage could use it? Dont we have oher items like that? (the only thing that come to mind at the moment is the stupid crown that only Ermor can use but I keep getting from indies)