Info: Blood stones and MR

[llamabeast]

Look, if people want to act elitist, I'll happily play that game.

I hope that wasn't directed at me, because I spent quite a bit of time trying to give a good concise explanation when I could have just suggested you read the CBM1.6 thread where there are many many pages on this debate.

I know reading Calahan's post will probably make you feel aggravated (Calahan: people are less likely to read what you say when you insult them at the same time), but his points are valid. There was enormous resistance to removing clams, because people liked them. However eventually everyone got so tired of games with players having hundreds of clams that most people agreed.

Claims of hundred of clams are patently ridiculous except in those rare instances where every nation turtles...In a game like that, Clams are not the problem.

...And all this somehow puts the nation that invest in research, thugs and SC's instead of clams, at a distinct disadvantage? I do not think so.

If you're accusing us of lying, then that's quite annoying to be honest. There's no motivation for us to do that. Games with hundreds of clams were common. Why do you think we modded them out if they were actually fine? It would have been much easier not to.

You're right about the 16 turn payback time or whatever (off the top of my head I think it's 14 but never mind). However a mid-sized game can easily reach turn 80, and the exponential nature of the clam process makes it easy to get to the hundred(s) of clam point by that time. Once you've got 30-odd clams you can fund another clam per turn just by alchemizing your pearls. If you get Wish then you can make another clam for every 14-odd clams you have. So once you have about 40 clams and Wish, you can make 3 clams per turn just from clam income. Compound interest at nearly 10% PER TURN racks up crazy fast.