Are devils worth 7 blood each?

[Soapyfrog]

Gandalf Parker said:
Surely those offer some challenge to the clammers.

Do they? I dont know!! I cant understand how they would. Massive gem income gives you freedom of action without significant constraints... seems like a no-brainer to me!

Well if there are counter-strategies then I'd love to hear them in detail, since I would prefer not to have to clam like a madman just to keep up.

Gandalf Parker said:Your games have 17 people using the same strategy? No wonder you have a problem with balance issues.

I dunno... can you really NOT clam and survive in a game that is certainly going to Last more that 50-60 turns? I mean out of 17 maybe not all of them will use that strategy but the winner at the end of the game WILL be a someone who has implemented one or more of these investment strategies.

johan osterman said:
Also, as has been pointed out by various other posters, some players enjoy the presence and dominance of the high end troops and spells.

I enjoy that too, but I think a GOOD game is one where players are forced to make DIFFICULT decisions with regards to the use of their limited resources. If you have ivnestment strategies that allow for exponential growth, but a) there is not equal opportunity to use them and b) the game doesnt continue to scale as your economy grows, then all the high end magic and summons etc become massively devalued.

[Cohen]

Clam is effectively strong, but you can handle a loner clamming if you're stronger.

But investing in clams requires a good amount of water gems, especially at starting. Sadly none can see you're clamming til lyou reveal your strenght, and this IMO is the bad thing.
If people could see you're raising your gem income every turn far beyond your province ownage chance by finding sites, probably will gang up unless they want to find themselves against dozens of horrors that run in a totally unpredictable way in your land, to have to face some wish empowered SCs or such. In a long term game you'll find yourself without any chance of global spell during more than 1 turn too.
The other bad stuff is that a scout can keep the clam and so is immune to most ranged spells and raiding (but usually they're inside a castle)
IMO Clams should work only on mages (they know how to take care of those trinkets and such) and the mage should be set to research (unless we want to change the clam working system, as the mage is required to do an action to "alchemize" the free pearls out from the clams he's bringing).

[Thufir]

Cohen said:
IMO Clams should work only on mages (they know how to take care of those trinkets and such) and the mage should be set to research (unless we want to change the clam working system, as the mage is required to do an action to "alchemize" the free pearls out from the clams he's bringing).

I like this idea! This sounds (to my novice mind) like a change that wouldn't be too dangerous to make, and is worth consideration of including in a patch. Although perhaps there's some difficulty in coding this, I think this is a very appropriate change to the way clams are handled.

[johan osterman]

Sopyfrog:

I would say that players have to make difficult decisions. And more importantly adopt and modify their strategies to the circumstances they find themselves in. I am not sure what you mean by devalued here, are you saying high end summons are not effective thus lack value or that they cost to little in the long run? I guess the second reading is the only one that makes sense taken with your other opinions, but then I do not quite see what you mean by that the game does not scale as your economy grows. Would you care to elaborate.

[Soapyfrog]

What I mean by devalued is that you wont care so much if you lost that doom horror you summoned because you are summoning two more PER TURN.

Thats devalued. When high end is no longer high end!

If you want "high end" to really MEAN something throughout the game, then you have to make sure that resources are constrained so that the upper limit of you game is always tough to reach.

I think dom2 has a plethora of strategies that can be pursued that can kleep the game interesting for very very long games as long as you disallow the investment strategies that create wealth out thin air. In the real world investing works of course (not at 14% mind you, generally speaking!!) but resources are always being consumed. If wealth is created out of thin air you have inflation.

So here would be my suggestions to make these investment strategies a little more interesting in dom2:

Added Restrictions:
Only mages can equip clams/fetishes/blood stones (I see cohen agrees with me on this one!)
Only blood mages can equip soul contracts
Random horror attacks on soul contract bearers should actually work

Gem producing items:
Clams allow the bearer to convert (via an action) 1 water gem into 2 astral gems.
Fetishes allow the bearer to convert (via an action) 1 nature gem to 2 fire gems.
Blood Stones allow the bearer to convert (via an action) any 1 gem of any type to an earth gem.

The action could be like "summon allies" you can just switch it on and forget about it, so no crazy micro-management neccessary.

Vampire Lords and Fallen Angels:
Ideally imho only uniques should be able to summon allies (outside of combat summons). There are tons of mass summoning spells if you want to summon batches of stuff, no need to have unit "factories". For example, vampire lors can cast blood rite instead of having the cummon allies ability...

[Ygorl]

Or you could play in a game with difficult research; low site frequency might help slow down clamhoarding and its end results as well.

[Cohen]

Random attack on Soul Contract bearers works!
I can assure, at least in 2.12 ... where I didn't known that Soul Contracts attracted horrors and assigned them to Warlocks and such ...
I'd agree in fact that only Blood Mages could get the Soul Contract.

Warlock:"Hey Scout, come there, I've sold your soul to Hell Lord"
Scout: "A well, what I've gained? Eternal Life? Neverending youth? All the women I want? To become the richest of the world?"
Warlock:"Oh yes everything of this ... put a sign on those contract"
Scout: "Wow" ... and signs
Here the first Devil appears but the Scout can't issue him any order and the Devil start rampaging for all the countryside in a frenzy killakilla.
Scout: "Mmmm there should be something wrong in that ... unless that red stuff is my first female"



About Fallen Angels, nothing to say to they Summon Allied Imps ... since Imps are good only as sieging and defending force (don't eat, and fly). Even Fallen Angel itself is far weaker than an ID for his Blood Slave cost (I know he's more magic, but why it is far less used? Probably because it's too weak even if it is not unique).

About Vamps, I'd agree to remove them the Summon Allies skill. They can easily cast the vampire summoning spell.
Otherwise may I suggest a rule that a Vampire in a province feeds himself with X population at turn (1 to 10), I mean Vampire, Lords, Count, Queen or whatever.
If the Vampire in question doesn't find any suitable pop victim, he'll dissanguate 1 troop non lifeless non undead non magical of your army (note: Commanders won't get touched by Vampires). If there're no living soldiers the Vampires that aren't fed should become an indipendant force proclaming a vampire a vampire commander (perhaps upgrading to count) and revolting against the army they're in, or they simply migrates in the next friendly owned province to seek new feeding.
This could prevent you to keep vampires in your land, going to attack forcefully unless you want to see your lands get depopulated as an Ermorian province. And usually to go in enemy land you'll need a strong dominion at least ... well not so difficult to reach with Aby or Mic that can sacrifice however, but however they eat pop of provinces that are going to become yours.
If Vamps goes hiding and eat in enemy provinces, a message like the unrest caused by spies should appear.
Solar Brillance spell should be mostly effective too against Vamps, killing them asap it is cast in battle.
The Second Sun global could burn them out too. (beware all ppl will be interested in dispelling it or attaking you because their provinces will get warmer)

If you have to issue an order to produce gems, even for a better alchemize, you probably have too many mages spending time creating gems, making this strategy totally wothless considering you strip resources to your research and combat firepower.

[Soapyfrog]

Heh yeah there should be SOME kind of cost for spreading rampant vampirism through your lands... heheh I was just thinking pop death and unrest!

As for soul contract horrors in 2.12 its not working. When I get a "lesser horror attacks" message, I get the "bad vcr" crashbug when I try to watch the battle and the scout with the contract is still alive when I check. Maybe this is only hapening with hidden units?

[PvK]

Yes, I like that idea (Vampire's Summon Allies order could require and consume population, just like the Unholy-1 raising of Ghouls. Seems appropritate, thematic and limiting).

PvK

[Kel]

Soapyfrog said:If wealth is created out of thin air you have inflation.

I don't know about it being created out of thin air but yes, there is inflation. That's a *good* thing, though. Every game has a natural life cycle and evolves through stages, otherwise research would not be a meaningful element.

There seems to have been a recent push of people who want the game to *not* evolve by discouraging the use of SC's and other mid/late game tactics, instead favoring the national troops that are more effective in the early game.

I like the way it is now. Each instance of a game evolves into different stages and you have to employ different tactics at different stages. You can talk about how powerful soul contracts are but what if someone attacks you on turn 10 by summoning troops while you are still making brazen skulls to work towards contracts ? Soul contracts are effective during certain phases of the game, in certain situations, just as pure summoning and national troops are at other parts of the game.

If you want the option to have research caps or turn limits in your game or in the program, that's fine by me, but I don't want my games turning into limited Versions of what they are now.

Summary:
Minor balance tweaking (ala the VQ changes) = yes
Major strategic element rebalancing = no

- Kel