Are devils worth 7 blood each?

[johan osterman]

Soapyfrog said:

Well I do not object to exponential economic growth, of course, if you take Moo2 or Civ as examples these games integrate such growth very well into the game itself: You MUST grow to survive and economic growth is ubiquitous. Further, the games scale very well... you dont start producing the best unit in the game on turn 60, thats for sure.

You seem to labour under the absurd notion that 1 turn in one game is directly translates to 1 turn in another. By turn 60 in MOO2 you would have researched less than half a dozen technologies and would just be getting started with the game, in dom2 you could very well have, for all intents and purposes, won a midsize game by turn 60.

Secondly growth in these games is tied to and constrained to various factors such as population, resources, geographical areas, whichs caps your maximum growth, and as the game continues you will constantly find youself resource constrained, so if you want to REALLY grow exponentially, you must physically expand and thus conflict with your neighbours.

In Dominions2 you have this exponential growth strategy in clamming etc. as well. However it is not tied to expansion, it is self-sustaining (i.e. you will never really be resource constrained once your clamming etc oeprations get going)... so you do NOT need to attack your neighbours, in fact you shouldn't since its counter-productive. That's not a very good game mechanic IMHO.

....

If you do not expand and use your resources in other ways than trying to get clams and hoard them you will get stomped, even if you play just 2 players on a enormous map. If you are to acquire any significant number clams you will have to expand etc in order to get the reources you need to produce the clams and the money to get the mages you need in order to use them.

[Soapyfrog]

johan osterman said:
If you do not expand and use your resources in other ways than trying to get clams and hoard them you will get stomped, even if you play just 2 players on a enormous map. If you are to acquire any significant number clams you will have to expand etc in order to get the reources you need to produce the clams and the money to get the mages you need in order to use them.

You will use resources in other ways, and you will expand in the early game, clean up the indeps around, maybe shoot a cripple or two if its convenient, but once your clamhoarding operations get under way, the actual NEED to expand to continue your growth will disappear.

[Boron]

Soapyfrog said:

You will use resources in other ways, and you will expand in the early game, clean up the indeps around, maybe shoot a cripple or two if its convenient, but once your clamhoarding operations get under way, the actual NEED to expand to continue your growth will disappear.

Expansion is always not bad . Gives you more income .
On 50% magic site frequency ,the most common setting in mp games i guess in average a fully searched province nets you about 3-5 gems , you get gold and you find perhaps even very special sites like special mages / boni for summoning . And not to forget you can perhaps bloodhunt the new province .

Those investment strategies are good but only if you are in a relative good position like 3rd or 4th . If your enemy has 10 provinces more which are searched this is like if he has +30-50 clams , perhaps more if you include blood etc. in the calculation .


But clamhoarding is of course very powerful . A problem is that those nations who can sitesearch bad and are bad hoarders of one of the good hoard items like marignon/man etc. are disadvantaged after earlygame .

If you see clamhoarding from another side it is perhaps more a bless then a curse because it is a possibility to do inner growth .
In master of orion 2 the bigger nation had normally always an advantage because 20% more planets meant 20% more supplies/income/researchpower .
In civilization it is better handled because of the corruption mechanism and the map is rather small .