Mod: CBM 1.7 released

[Valerius]

If you'd like to add gem gens back into the game I'd suggest using gem generating summons rather than magic items, since monster modding is much more robust than item modding. Some of the advantages:

Differentiation & Limitation: one of the problems with clams is that anyone could (and did) make them so they didn't just benefit the nations that needed them and that they were forged in quantities only limited by the game engine. If you go to a summons based system using unique national summons you could say, for example, that Jotunheim gets 1 unique gem generating summon, while Bandar Log gets 4. Or you could vary the income per summon so that nations that needed gem gens got more out of their summons. You could also generate gems other than S/E/F in order to better match the character of a nation.

You could also vary the cost/research level of obtaining gem gens. A weak nation might be able to obtain their first gem gen summon at a low research level/cost while a more powerful nation will not be able to obtain any gem generating summons until much later/at a higher cost.

Originally Posted by Zeldor

Tartarians should be removed too and national troops boosted. I really want to see nations being still same nations even in late game. Not some homogenous mass that specialises in S and D. And uses all E to make more and more hammers or gear for tartarians.

I agree completely! And I think using summons to generate gems and even troops could help do this in a way magic items can't. As an example, what about a game setting that doubles your starting cap gem income, has a magic site frequency of around 20% and has gem generating national summons? Your gem income would be heavily skewed towards the paths of your national mages but you'd have some diversity in case you really needed a certain summon/magic item (and trade becomes more interesting since you won't necessarily have the gem income to forge some items or summon some units). As the game went on your gem income would increase but it would be in paths your nation specializes in. Of course you need viable troop and especially thug/SC options to spend these gems on. I think CBM does a good job making the various troop summons appealing and the EDM now provides thug/SC options in paths that didn't have them before (of course the ideal is national summons but not every nation has a good set of those). It's not perfect but I think it can be balanced. For example, one of the really tough things about death/blood nations is that they aren't impaired by darkness. You could remove Darkness as a researchable spell and allow D/B nations one or more unique summons that would autocast the spell. So it would be a tool but not one they could use on a large scale.

Reduce micro: instead of a clam generating 1 pearl and having dozens of clams you could have a summon generate several gems, making management of this resource easy.

Presence on the map: A frustrating thing about gem gens is that you can breach the walls of a castle that you know has clam holders and they'll just be transferred to another location. If the gem generator is an actual unit though it won't necessarily be able to escape. You can make these units of varying strength; perhaps some will be quite resistant to damage while others are vulnerable to even low level remote attack spells. Perhaps some are mobile while others are not. I think you can make the unit immune to being enslaved/charmed/etc so that while an opponent could eliminate your gem generating units they couldn't gain them for themselves (have to test this though). You could make them immobile, no leadership, negative magicboost - basically try to make it so all they can do is stay in one place and generate gems. It's not perfect (for instance you could prophetize them) but I think you could have house rules not to do that kind of thing.

Options: with the range of monster modding commands available you could do all sorts of interesting things. Maybe a summon that generates a large amount of gems for a few turns and then generates only a few gems but also dom summons allies? Or a D gem generating summon that also causes unrest and population loss?


Now the one problem here is that you can only add so many summons to the game. The next patch will help with this immensely. Until then, I still think you could implement something like this (I'd have to check to see how many free slots are available with CBM 1.6 or 1.7) though perhaps you'd have issues if you combined this with mod nations.