Clams overpowered?

[HotNifeThruButr]

Piercing beats unarmored much harder than siege does *150% I think, whereas siege does 125% for certain, or as many would put it, "fo' sho'"*

The real problem was that while Riflemen, Archers, and Head Hunters make rock-strewn meat out of gargoes, Death Coil makes meat out of them, so does stone-form-when-they-focus-fire.

They should rename Spell Breakers to Crack Addicts... well, Magic Addicts.

But we're going off topic now.

[Catquiet]

Originally posted by Norfleet:

quote:

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Originally posted by Catquiet:
If you want lots of clams all you need are water gems and time.

If you want water gems, you're likely going to have to find them, if your nation doesn't start with any base income in that area. If you want time, you're going to have to fight off your neighbors who want to take what you have. It's never as easy as it sounds.

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For a clam hoarder to win against a non-hoarder, he only needs to fight his opponent to a stalemate while making clams in the background.

For a non-hoarder to win against a clam hoarder, he needs to conquer his opponent's provinces and he needs to do it quickly before the hoarder's gem income becomes overwhelming. Fighting your opponent to a standstill actually means you are losing ground.

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"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else -- if you ran very fast for a long time, as we've been doing."

"A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

[ April 16, 2004, 07:57: Message edited by: Catquiet ]

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Huzurdaddi:
That's a pretty silly opinion. It seems you have played too many MMORPGs.

Good lord. Given the choice between contracting the bubonic plague and playing MMORPGs, I'll take the plague. Thanks anyway, though.

If in a strategy game something is overbalanced ( as evidencied by most people doing it ) then it should be nerfed.

I think it's a bit of a stretch to say "most people" are doing with regards to the entire VQ matter. Most people, on the other hand, build or summon units. Clearly, units are overpowered, right? Let's nerf units.

If VQs and Clams were the most powerful things ever, I'd be seeing EVERYONE with a VQ pouring out clams. Clearly, this isn't the case. Plenty of games are won by non-VQs without a sizeable clam hoard. For every game won by a clam hoarder with VQ , many other would-be clam hoarders and VQ drivers are gruesomely beaten to death by rushers before their clamming can give them anything useful.

To prove this point, I aim to find a game to pit myself against a would-be VQ clam hoarder and kill him without having the starting VQ or the clam hoard. Grah!

That being said I think that the VQ is overbalanced. Actually it's lifedrain that is overbalanced. It really allows for wacky stuf when it is on the SC chassis. By wacky I mean early expansion.

I don't really buy that story. While it's certainly true that there are pretender chassis that are very much subpar and generally considered to be dullards and never taken, and the VQ is certainly one of the best combat chassis options, it's not QUITE that powerful out of the gate, and doesn't really take off until some research, or items, can be slapped on. Oddly, none of these spells cast are native paths of the VQ, which further inflates the VQ's actual cost because you have to pay the moderate price for all these extra paths. To really go overboard with it, with the way *I* run one, costs 500 nation points: I've effectively expended the entire national allocation on chassis + magic...just to get a combat monster. I more or less forgo a useful bless effect or scales worth crap for this privilege.

Oh and Clams are pretty messed up. Something should be done, really. Don't know what. Perhaps just take the damn things out. Astral pearls are just very powerful.

I don't believe that clams are "pretty messed up", although I wouldn't mind seeing them bumped up in construction level, or raised in cost, as I've mentioned. However, I don't really care for whines or somebody else's funny little mods on the matter: If the developers feel it's real issue, they can do something about it in a patch. Then it'll be OFFICIAL. The role of clams ultimately doesn't change: The sacrifice of short-term use of income for a long-term investment, as opposed to a great deal of other stuff, which is "live for the minute" thinking. I tend to frown on this sort of thinking as a personal matter: Given a short-term solution, and a long-term solution with a better payoff, I'll go with the long-term solution any day. Patience is easy: a penny saved is a penny earned, but resources squandered today are squandered forever.

About clams making up for the rest of the water path

I never claimed clams "make up" for the rest of the water path. I merely said that water gems, except in special cases, are rarely useful: Once you have them, you have to do SOMETHING with them. Why not invest them so that someday, you'll actually get mileage out of them?

[ April 16, 2004, 08:03: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Catquiet:
For a clam hoarder to win against a non-hoarder, he only needs to fight his opponent to a stalemate while making clams in the background.

For a non-hoarder to win against a hoarder, he merely needs to halt the hoarding: If mages who make clams keep getting eaten by horrors, the hoarding will stop shortly.

[HotNifeThruButr]

Raising cost sounds really nice, that way, you don't have hordes of clams spawning more and more clams like demon-rabbit-aphrodisiac-cracked up-clams

Demon clams, come unto me!

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by HotNifeThruButr:
Raising cost sounds really nice, that way, you don't have hordes of clams spawning more and more clams like demon-rabbit-aphrodisiac-cracked up-clams

It'd be nice. It would seperate out the mere wannabes from the true investors. But it's still easier to counter clams by making sure anyone who makes one gets eaten by a horror. The more clams you make, the more hammers you lose when your clammers are eaten by horrors. There are few normal mages, with any kind of bodyguards, that can withstand horror attacks.

[tinkthank]

Seems that in order to get lots of clams and have them be useful (that is, not get them first at turn 90), you need to
- produces water mages
- use those water mages to go and find water gems
- use those water mages to forge clams/turn
- use those water gems to forge clams

That is what you spend. This has a nice payback, of course.
People who do not horde clams can, surely, do other worthwhile things with those resources instead of produce mages, have them find water gems, have them forge clams?
This is not to say that Clams might be harder to research, or require 10-water 5-astral pearls to make (my personal choice), but they certainly do not break the game in my opinion.
I find the comparison to Warcraft III extremely poor, no offense intended. WIII is an excellent game for what it is, but lacks the diversity found in Dom2. I really dont think there is any "cheese" in Dom2, which is not to say that everything is perfectly balanced (I feel some nations are stronger than others on the whole, but that is just me), just that there is no real comparison to WIII ("when you get to 2 minutes 40 seconds you will have your Beastmaster do XXX while your opponent still needs 20 seconds to get that Grunt out...").
Any nation with good magic gem income capabilities just needs to fight those other nations to a standstill. Yes. But I just think that is easier said than done.
Just my opinion, however, and I am a certified newbie.