The next patch

[Wendigo]

Hey Peter, don't blame me for using your numbers!
Obviously ignoring extra gem income is a simplification, but it's good enough to evaluate returns in regards to investment anyway.

Graeme:

Who says you won't cast search spells? You must remember that water magic is essentially useless other than for quickness, so it's not a particularly big loss to convert all your water gems to astral ones.

Oportunity costs. Mages & gems used to do one cannot be used to do the other. So you gotta choose.

It does only take about 35 turns to get to 100 clams once you have a decent income in other gems, as that's exactly what I've done with R'Lyeh.

Could you elaborate on this? % magic sites? map? # opponents? who are you putting 100 clams on?
And most important of all: where Atlantis & Ermor in the game?

What kind of game are you playing that you can spend 750-1000 gems in items with no immediate return, without your military power resenting from it? Really, if you had such a surplus why didn't you just go for the game & start killing opponents?

Re clams vs Voice of Tiamat:

No reason you can't do both. But once you've searched all your water provinces, there's no reason not to make clams.

Opportunity costs of course. Even more important because when you delay clam forging you delay your Return On Investment from those clams.

I am not saying that clam-forging cannot work, rather that it applies to very specific game settings. It's obvious that strategies based on economy building are stronger the longer the game, tho I find some of the 'fixes' being suggested a bit radical.

Why don't you just play faster games? The same fun with less MM.