The next patch

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by johan osterman:

quote:

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Originally posted by Stormbinder:

... But because they don't have "snowball" effect ("feeding on itself" in your own terms), which is the main attribute of geometric progression, they are not abusive, but instead are just good valid strategies that can be countered with others equaly good ones - and that's what this game is about after all.

Any effective investment of resources will have what you term a snowball effect. If you poor gems into summons these summons will allow you to conquer more provinces which will lead you to gain more available searchable provinces as well as income and resources, which in turn will allow you to earn more and summon more to conquer more which will let you ... etc.

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Thank you for reply Johan, I really appreciate it.


Certanly, I agree with your statement. After all
in any strategic game that I can think about once you begin to win territory/resourses from your opponent(s) and get stronger each new conquest is theoretically easer for you because now you have all your old resourses plus resourses of newly conquered
territory/country/province/colony/whatever. And it doesn't matter that much what tactic you are using while doing this because the result still the same.


But what I strongly feel makes clam-hoarding special case is the speed with witch it is happening. Once you have it really going you can double your gem investments very quickly (every 5-8 turns, depending on avaliablity of hammers/forge sites/mages). Look at Peter's two tables below for example, which describe the evolution of just _5_ astral gems invested into clams in the begining of the game. And of course in real game you often invest other water/astral gems into clams once you get additional income from searching your provinces, so it is even faster.


So the speed with wich the "snowball" grows once it gets rolling is much faster(mainly because it is geometrical progression) than with regular linear progression when you conquer enemy provinces. Also when you conquer province in your example you often suffer losses - and that slows your expansion. When you are siting in your castles mass-forging clams there are no losses, other than a bit of lost reseach, since it's just pure mathematic and doubling your investment every N turns.


But there is another factor that you and Kristofer are the only people quilified to comment about.

Please tell me this - when you designed this fantastic game, with all these different unique magic sites, as well as high-level spells for all magic schools - was it you intention that the Magic (gems) that power these spells would come mostly from these uniques sites of yours, from the territory that your Pretender God controls, perhaps with small addition of item-generated gems? Or your vision for the end-game was that by the end of medium and long games anywhere from 90-99% of your magic gems would be coming from hundreds and hundreds of clams siting in your magical treaury? Because as of now, as even opponents of clam-changes agree on this thread, more often than not it is 2nd situation by the end of many of long MP games.

I am sorry, I just can't help but feel that this is not the way it was intended to be by you, designers, since massive clam hoarding that person currently has to do to stay competitive against other clam-hoarders in long games feels so... boring.


Now if you tell me that everything is working the way it was intended in regards of Clams than I'll just shut up and will not bring this topic again on this Boards, I swear!

[ April 03, 2004, 01:52: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Zen:
I think that the reason Jasper and Pepe and a few others feel the way they do is they are of a similiar temperment (as I am) of aggression, I don't believe ethnic and religious cleansing should have alot of peace and at the very least vicious backstabbing to find the one true God. With that kind of temperment, having someone be able to sit by and make Clams unmolested until the game is more boring than fun is hard to imagine happening enough to be imbalanced.

Not exactly... I don't think it's a style of play issue. I'm not particularily attached to either style of play, but just think that aggresive play in Dominions clearly dominates passive play.

I have yet to see a passive player do anything other than be annexed.

[ April 03, 2004, 11:17: Message edited by: Jasper ]

[Jasper]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
Any effective investment of resources will have what you term a snowball effect. If you poor gems into summons these summons will allow you to conquer more provinces which will lead you to gain more available searchable provinces as well as income and resources, which in turn will allow you to earn more and summon more to conquer more which will let you ... etc.

This is exactly it. IMHO there are simply better forms of investment than Clams, e.g. seizing reseource generation from other players, especially as compared to having your resources stolen. Growth from conquest is exponential as well -- and far swifter than Clams.

IMHO the clam hoarder will have his resources stolen long before he can abuse geometric growth.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Jasper:
This is exactly it. IMHO there are simply better forms of investment than Clams, e.g. seizing reseource generation from other players, especially as compared to having your resources stolen. Growth from conquest is exponential as well -- and far swifter than Clams.

No, growth from conquest is _not_ exponential, and neither is growth from clams. Growth from conquest is linear. Growth from clams is geometric. You capture a province, search it for magic sites, and once you've done that you've received all the benefits you are ever going to receive from that province. Your gem income from there does not double every few turns, and your gold income does not either. The clams on the other hand, double in the amount of gems they produce without requiring any expansion whatsoever.

IMHO the clam hoarder will have his resources stolen long before he can abuse geometric growth.

Why don't you explain just how, exactly, making clams from astral and water gems hurts your ability to defend yourself? Please don't mention spells such as murdering winter, since it is useless even when combined with wolven winter in a heat dominion, and even more useless once the clam hoarder has put multiple domes over their capital.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Jasper:
I have yet to see a passive player do anything other than be annexed.

Who is saying anthing about passive play? Water gems are not particularly useful for expansion, or attacking your enemy until the late game. You can always save those pearls that you get from sites to use for your defense, and only use those generated by clams to fuel more clams, and experience no effective reduction in magical power over the person who is not making clams. It adds a few turns to the time to 100 clams, but who says that you blindly go for 100 clams, and ignore your other needs? Even an astral income of 50 per turn from items is ridiculously large.

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
No, growth from conquest is _not_ exponential, and neither is growth from clams. Growth from conquest is linear. Growth from clams is geometric. You capture a province, search it for magic sites, and once you've done that you've received all the benefits you are ever going to receive from that province. Your gem income from there does not double every few turns, and your gold income does not either. The clams on the other hand, double in the amount of gems they produce without requiring any expansion whatsoever.

Greame: The income from one captured province will indeed linearly increase your money. The thing is that the gold you recieve from this province will in turn allow you to field bigger armies that will allow you to increase your speed of expansion, which will allow you to recruit even bigger armies etc. Thus making expansion by conquest a geometric growth as well. This is then somewhat hampered by upkeep and the need to replace losses in combat etc. But on the other hand the increased return on the investment from conquering a province is often faster than the 7-20 turn investment return from clam forging. A good province might well recompensate the losses of capturing it within the next turn or two.

I am not ruling out that clams are overpowered, just disputing that the dividends paid by clam hoarding is unique in having geometric growth compared to other forms of resource collection.

Stormbinder, just to clear things up, while I am responsible for some of what have went into dom 2, it is Johan Karlssson and Kristoffer (my brother) who are the principal creators and designers of dom 2.

Edit: Capturing provinces also potentionally denies them to other players. Possibly hemming their growth. Every clam, like every province, provides a linear increase in a resource, or potentionally several resources for a province, but since both clams and provinces can be used to acquire more of the same (provinces by allowing you to field more armies) they both alow for geometric growth, both snowballs both feed upon themselves. Clams however does not hit the roof in the way provinces does when territores come into short supply.

[ April 03, 2004, 20:03: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by johan osterman:
I am not ruling out that clams are overpowered, just disputing that the dividends paid by clam hoarding is unique in having geometric growth compared to other forms of resource collection.

I'm not suggesting that they be removed entirely, or even have a hard cap placed on them. I'm just suggesting that perhaps something like horror marking the user (Say that the horrors are attracted to this source of magic), would be an effective limiter. With 5 people holding clams, you won't see too many horror attacks, and your losses will be small. With 50 holding clams, you will most likely see enough attacks by horrors to limit the growth potential.