The next patch

[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.

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

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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.

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I am not 100% sure if horror-marking clam hoarders would be enough to limit clam-abuse. It'll all depends on average life expectancy of standart clam's owner, and I don't have numbers to make a qualified guess.

Personally I think it would be better to make Clams cost 20 water gems and require con 6, and make Fever Fetishes cost 10 fire gems and 5 death (same con6). But if for some reason High Powers (developers) disagree with such changes, than at least making clam owners horror-marked would definetly be a step in right direction.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
Personally I think it would be better to make Clams cost 20 water gems and require con 6, and make Fever Fetishes cost 10 fire gems and 5 death (same con6).

Disease is a fire/nature effect (seven year fever), so that change doesn't make that much sense.