Poll: Is Clam Hording Too Good?

[Salamander8]

quantum_mechani said:

This is a rather negligible difficulty, barring extreme misfortune in randoms.

While not exactly difficult it's not negligible either. It's 1 in 4 of a random pick and then you still need to also get +1W on top of that 1N as they only have 2W. And I've had it up to 10 slave mages in a game with zero N before.

And I wanted to place more stress on the fact that you have to pay even more gems upfront to get clammers rather than any actual difficulty.

[LoloMo]

Here is a suggestion, replace the Clam item with a "Summonable Clam" unit which produces one astral per turn.

It can be placed in the construction tree with the same W3N1 requirements.

This way, you can add another variable to it, its upkeep cost. It would also make the the "Clam" unit vulnerable to assassination spells. It can be made immobile, feebleminded, vulnerable to fire, cold, lightning, poison, etc. Maybe even add the cause misfortune attribute if there is one.

The big thing would be the upkeep cost. If the upkeep cost is say 40 gold per turn, that would certainly restrict the magnitude of clam hoarding.

[jutetrea]

Ideas not bad, but I think 40g (600 base) is too high per, possibly 10 (150) - 15ish(225).

It would reduce the effectiveness of, or at least add to the idea of carrying gem producers with an army. Scouts etc with gems would still work though.

If going that route, could also give it a moderate chunk of HP (20ish), keep it mobile and very vanilla but give it disease, 2 move, terrible stats and possibly afflictions.

heck, just increase the naiad cost a bit and give it the enchantress' gem producers ability. Make it cost a good bundle (40-45ish) but give a useful unit added utility. Take longer to pay back the investment, but in the meantime you get 3W3N that you might need anyway. If someone wants to make 100 of em, go nuts. Not really a great idea, as I still think the first 10-15 clam-type effects shouldn't incur a real penalty.

[Micah]

Empowering a shaman to clam once you hit construction 6 is only 85W, plus another 35 for a Naiad after that (for 2/turn), or 10 clams worth of water gems. After that everyone's able to forge them. While a 10 pearl/turn advantage is really nice it's hardly game-breaking. That's also a worst-case scenario as far as finding indy mages or access to Naiads goes, especially since enchantresses are fairly common. The clamming nations also get a slight bump in early-game production, but non-clam nations can make that up by casting a gem global with their stocked gems once the research is available to do so. Again, an advantage for the clammers, but not one that's broken compared to other game options, especially considering how lousy water magic is. If your nationals have W they're giving up some other path that's more useful in other areas.

[Xietor]

The issue is they are unbalancing when being made at 2-3 a turn and start to number well over a hundred, amounting to a free wish every turn.

[Micah]

Yes, my point was that by the time that happens any nation can have 90 clams, compared to the 100 that a naturally-clamming nation can have. Not a big deal.

[Xietor]

Not everyone wants to clam though. Personally I find it boring. And i do not like to see any one strategy as necessary to win a game.

And not every race can use the astral gems. It takes s9 to wish.