Mod: Conceptual Balance Mod 1.6

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by BigDaddy

Like this, let's say I like to clam hoard with Atlantis, because it can be hard climb up on land and make war after I take out another underwater nation. So, with the CBM I can no longer clam hoarde, and the other players are no longer concerned bout Atlantis hoarding clams and suddenly emerging to beat them into a pulp...

I say clam hoarding as a time bomb for underwater nations... you have to find a way to go down there and get him...

I remember in dom2 without the CBM clam hoarding was violently fast... They have slowed it tons in the stock version since then. I think that they have thought carefully about how fast clams pay off. Does it make sense to make clams unique in all cases?

This is bad game design because you're basically saying a UW nation basically should stop playing the game for awhile (30 turns? 50?) unless someone else can be bothered to come and fight them underwater. In the meantime, they should be able to build up an insurmountable advantage by just sitting back and clamming?

Winning the game should involve playing the game. Not just seeing how much you can abuse the forging system. And attacking UW is really hard in Vanilla - I'd say it would be next to impossible for a land nation to take out an UW nation before late game. Further, there's the social problem of everybody knowing you're sitting there clamming, but no one is willing to attack you because it weakens them, so you just don't get attacked. (Of course, everyone is clamming, and water income is actually less common underwater, so you probably lose the clamming race anyway. This is a pretty degenerate metric for winning/losing the game).

The lack of interactivity between land and water nations is a serious problem in vanilla. CBM in 1.6 took large strides towards fixing this by making access UW easier, and the ability of aquatic-only commanders to leave the seas easier (cheaper water-breathing and air-breathing items). And this is a good thing. Attacking underwater is still too hard, even with these changes, but at least it can happen earlier and requires fewer resources.

Besides, not fighting a war is still plenty beneficial at present (don't need to divert valuable mage resources to combat, or use as much cash on armies so you can spend it on mages or infrastructure). But clams just turned it into an 'I win' button if you could successfully turtle and forge tons of clams. As a strategy that simply had to go.