Conceptual Balance Series (Mod)

[Peter Ebbesen]

Truper said:

This seems an odd thing to say. A lot of nations aren't likely to have either an Astral 3 mage for dispelling, or enough of their own gems lying around to overwrite a Forge.

Honestly, I was thinking that people would cooperate immediately to get it dispelled. Admittedly, I have only played MP in games with few people rather than the 10-17 big games, but Forge of the Ancients is something like the ultimate war declaration since anybody who has it up for a significant amount of time is quite likely to win the game due to his access to cheap path-boosters, construction of most of the artefacts not already made, good weapons and armour, much that you could not even forge before FoA - it all adds up to greatly enhanced power. Under the standard rules, Fever Fetishes (everybody), Clams (W1), and Blood Stones (B2) are just one aspect of its power, and I find Blood Stones to be the least abusive of the three as it requires a specialise mages (no random sage is going to do this), still has a non-negligible cost even with FoA, and the output (gems) cannot be converted to its input (primarily slaves) easily.

It is one thing to argue that Fever Fetishes/Clams of Pearl should be more restricted because they can provide an easy ramping up of power from the very beginning of the game due to reinvestment and low pathcost; it is another to argue that Blood Stones should be restricted because they become economic to make when one of the best global enchantments in the game is in play.

[Tuna]

Peter: I think the point was that with the bloodstones, the caster of the FoA can recast it almost immediately. Enough bloodstones, and you can screw the extra gems and just cast it every turn.

This of cource is a huge investment, and not something made lightly. But it's still possible.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Tuna said:
Peter: I think the point was that with the bloodstones, the caster of the FoA can recast it almost immediately. Enough bloodstones, and you can screw the extra gems and just cast it every turn.

This of cource is a huge investment, and not something made lightly. But it's still possible.

Unless somebody else has filled out the fifth slot or the FoA was taken down by another FoA rather than a dispel... I grant you that it is possible, but, honestly, I don't see that the danger of somebody using FoA to forge 80 bloodstones for 800 stored bloodslaves (enough for 20 Soul Contracts under FoA to put the price in perspective, or even 80 Lifelong Protection, for those who want to swamp the opposition with imps in battle LOL) and 80 B2 mage-turns of work (at least two rounds given the size of the magic item repository) is great enough that it should warrant making the bloodstone even harder to acquire in general.

If somebody does manage to pull it off, the more power to him. The fact that something can potentially pay off very well under the right circumstances is not in itself justification for preventing it from happening.

[Boron]

Tuna said:
Peter: I think the point was that with the bloodstones, the caster of the FoA can recast it almost immediately. Enough bloodstones, and you can screw the extra gems and just cast it every turn.

This of cource is a huge investment, and not something made lightly. But it's still possible.

Yeah .

And with dispelling it requires some effort .
If you play in a game with 10-15 ppl and are at friendly relations with 2-3 while most others are engaged already in a war i think the chances are not bad that the forge stays up some time .

You still have to invest something like 60-80 pearls for the dispel attempt normally at least normally .
On turn 30-40 the forge is normally cast first .
If you are a clamhoarder (Pythium , Arco , Atlantis , Ryleh) you have probably an astral gem income of 15-40 .
If you are another nation your astral gem income though is probably much lower and used for forging .

So the chances are normally really good that your forge stays up a few turns cause at this stage of the game probably a lot of players don't want to invest a still rather big amount of their gem income to dispel the forge .

For a forge cast with 120 gems ( = 40 extra ) you could forge 7 2/3 dwarfen hammers or cast e.g. 6 times enliven statues / 8 times mechanical men .

Especially the items which cost only 5 gems are nice with the forge cause they only cost 2 gems then .

As i said if you are a blood nation then you forge as quick as possible as many bloodstones as you can .
Then you have probably soon higher earth gem income then others have pearl income .

Blood + Forge is imo Abuse .
On turn 30-40 when the blood nation first casts forge it has normally already a bloodincome of 100-200/turn so really enough to forge lots of stuff + profit from the forge immediately .

A nonbloodnation has probably not enough resources to profit from the forge when it is up only 1-3 turns but a blood nation has .

[Peter Ebbesen]

Boron, you argue that the combination of FoA+bloodstones is so powerful that bloodstones should be increased in cost, yet, at the same time, you argue that people will not band together to take the FoA down, because they have better things to do with their astral gem income. While one should never underestimate the power of conservatism and the "let the others bleed to take care of the common nuisance", that does tend to argue that player mentality is a very real issue here rather than an inherently overpowered or easy to get bloodstone.

Moreover, your mathematics do not quite add up. Originally, you were talking about 20-30 bloodstones per turn in the middle game (turns 30-40), which adds up to 200-300 slaves per turn (you may get some reduction for dwarven hammers but you are unlikely to have mass produced them prior to the FOA). In your most recent post, you mention that it is not uncommon to have a slave income of 100-200 in the middle game - which is not enough. Now, I appreciate that it is possible that you have been saving up blood slaves for several rounds prior to casting the FoA, which in itself puts you in a weaker position for that period of time as you are playing a waiting game, but even so this will require the dedication of the majority of your mage force for a good number of rounds: both the B2 mages and all your bloodhunters. That is a very serious investment of resources, which will only really pay off in a long game. Doing it is a gamble that you do not need an army now, but gems later. An attractive result, no doubt, but not in itself overpowered.

Finally, as I have pointed out, there are several other very attractive investments you could be making with the same bloodslaves with the FoA. (1 extra Soul Contract for every 4 bloodstones, if you have B2 mages equipped with blood path boosters, and, given that this requires fewer mages to forge on a round by round basis, it is likely that you have dwarven hammers influencing a greater percentage of the total blood slave cost. E.g. Each dwarven hammer while forging bloodstones will save you 3 bloodslaves, while forging Soul Contracts each will save you 10 bloodslaves)

The real question, I guess, is one I should adress to those of you who play MP in large games: How often do you see a blood nation perform this FoA+ 20-30 bloodstones per turn feat in the midgame? If it is rare, then it would appear to be more of a theoretical worry than something that needs to be addressed. There are many good combinations in Dominions 2, and it is to my mind only if one of them becomes obligatory to use that one should worry about weakening it. If it is common, but it does not seem to exert a great influence on the actual game outcome, likewise.

If, however, it turns out that FoA+bloodstones is a great problem then perhaps one should increase the cost of the FoA rather than the bloodstone. After all, the FoA is an extremely powerful global enchantment, one of the most powerful in the game. It costs the same as the enchantments that give you +20 gems/turn, but no matter which theme you play, if you put it up you will be saving much, much, more than that each and every turn until you run out of gems or things to neat things to forge.

For every theme, blood and non-blood alike, favourite FoA forging for me is Jade Armour, Rainbow Armour, Lightless Laterns, amulets of luck and anti-magic, rings of regeneration, boots of flying, and, of course, artefacts and relevant path boosters. I strongly disagree with the sentiment that a non-blood nation will not profit from having a FoA up for just 1-3 turns. When I use it, I forge 40-50 useful objects the first round, typically cleaning out my gem storage or a very significant fraction thereof. It is very, very, difficult not to make a huge profit on it. Anything after round #1 is just an added bonus.

I am just bemused that you attach such an importance to the bloodstone issue, when (to my mind), the interesting FoA point is that the FoA is very cheap for what it does for everybody.

[Huzurdaddi]

For every theme, blood and non-blood alike, favourite FoA forging for me is Jade Armour, Rainbow Armour, Lightless Laterns, amulets of luck and anti-magic, rings of regeneration, boots of flying, and, of course, artefacts and relevant path boosters.

They are all excellent things to build. I find though that building the gem producting items ( in particular fever fetishes since anyone can build them, and of course all of the clams I can make ) are particularly abusive.

*if* you think you can keep the the forge up for a couple of turns then going for the investment items really rocks. Oh and lightless lanterns of course!