Yet another Clamhoarding, Castling Discussion

[Endoperez]

Originally posted by Boron:

the best clam horder is atlantis i would say .
but since atlantis has very few pretenders and the only [national] mage with other skills than water magic is the king of deep with 2 completely random other magic skills i think the idea behind the clams was to enable especially the 2 underwaterraces and especially atlantis in the long run to get other magic pathes too .
this general idea is good and works well .
[/QB]

I think the idea behind clams was to ease micromanagement for Astral mages. Atlantis' Kings of the Deep have two _linked_ randoms, they are always of the same path! And Nature, Fire, Earth and Air are components in some multipath Water spells that are hard to get access to. Acid spells, Fire Ward and Claymen, Bone Melter and Freezing mist. The Last is not exceptional, but can cause heavies to rout.

Nature has nice items that won't win you a game, but maybe a battle or two here and there. And you get a booster to three, and an access to Foul Vapors with it.
Death lets you get up to 4 without artifacts or empowerment, and you can get Revenants to forge Skull Mentors easily if you have gems for it.
Earth lets you forge Boots (to EEE), then Dwarven Hammer.
Fire has the basic set plus Runesmasher and in the artifacts Ember. No booster, though.
Water 5 is not useful at forging, nor in summons. But can I say Murdering Winter?

And Blood could be useful too, if you got it early and had land province or two to hunt from... You would still have to catch slaves for both the Ice Devil (Frost Fiends are nice, but not worth it for a nation without national blood mages) and empowerement to Blood-3.


Even leaving the blood out as useless, 5/8 is nice. This was without considering items/spells that Atlantis has access to without randoms (W3/S3) and for which one random would be enough.
With the cheapest items all paths except Blood would look even better. Kings are expensive, and that's about their only weakness. In the long run, Atlantis is frighteningly versatile.

Now that I have written this, clams seem truly frightening in the hands of Atlantis as they would allow Atlantis to empower Kings. E/F for Fever Fetishes, D/F for fire booster and evil Banefire spells, S/F for Astral Fires... I will have to give it a try!

Last question : can you cast flames from afar on underseaprovinces ?

Probably not.


corrected "propably"

[ July 02, 2004, 16:50: Message edited by: Endoperez ]