Tip: Template for reducing late game MM hell

[Sombre]

Via mod commands? No. Kinda sounds like it would be even more of a micro headache when you have a ton of them and start casting indy farsummons on your guys in order to get them.

[Sombre]

I think it's pretty obvious wraithlord is concerned about the potentially fatal effects of arguing with K.

May we all learn from his example.

[WraithLord]

You got me there Sombre

[Squirrelloid]

WL: there actually is a factual disagreement here. K is positing that gem gens make the endgame more fair because you don't just lose to a massive sneak attack - ie, the fact that this income is hard to take away is better for balance. Whereas it's been posited by a number of people that gem gens are unbalanced because its gem income that can't be taken away. That's a major factual disagreement about what constitutes fair and balanced in the game.

[Psycho]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

WL: there actually is a factual disagreement here. K is positing that gem gens make the endgame more fair because you don't just lose to a massive sneak attack - ie, the fact that this income is hard to take away is better for balance. Whereas it's been posited by a number of people that gem gens are unbalanced because its gem income that can't be taken away. That's a major factual disagreement about what constitutes fair and balanced in the game.

When the end game comes, you need to castle and dome yourself. You need to protect important provinces. If you let your enemy take them so easily, you deserve to lose.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Psycho

When the end game comes, you need to castle and dome yourself. You need to protect important provinces. If you let your enemy take them so easily, you deserve to lose.

Yes, you can protect a few sites. But if all your gem income is tied to sites you can lose an awful lot of it to a blitz attack. And then you've basically lost the game. A reduction of gem income by 50% is game losing at that point, because then your opponent outspends you substantially.

Hiisi:
Some nations have sneakable armies that can take PD without being especially strong. Or have thugs that don't actually need equipment. Or purchaseable SCs. etc... Removing the option for others to summon them just makes the ones who can purchase them better.

[Psycho]

Any changes to reduce MM should attempt not to unbalance the game even more.

[WraithLord]

Originally Posted by Psycho

Any changes to reduce MM should attempt not to unbalance the game even more.

Agreed. This is the chief reason why some items were removed from the recommendation list.

Now, does anyone seriously claim that removing gem gens unbalances the game?- Not taking into account gem gen dependent nations.
If so, please elaborate the rational behind this claim.

[Burnsaber]

IMHO, if anyone loses 90% of provinces to a sneak attack, they likely just had some PD in those provinces and thought "I bought 3-5 pd and now I never have to worry about anything happening to them, ever!".

If that is the case, that guy deserved to lose. That lose was a result of that guy's own stupidity, not because he didn't have any gem gens.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by K

1. So they are not unbalancing the game. That's a flaw?
2. Yeh, and defending provinces, castles, mages, etc is so tedious.
3. The funny thing about the endgame is that you can take 90% of a person's provinces in a few rounds with thugs and SCs and then you have to actually fight their armies. It's actually good that the win doesn't always go to the sneak attacker.
4. Yes, having a gem income adds a level of complexity to the game. This is the wrong game for you if you don't like complexity.
5. Let's face it, any gem income and Wish causes weird things to happen. I once ended a game just by using my non-Astral, not gem-gen, gem income to Armageddon the place to death to force the end of the game because 15 players were stuck in terminal turtle mode and the game was never going to end.

Gem gens only cause MM when you spend a lot of time turtling and have extra gem income and mage time to spend on them. The fact that you want to hit people early and hard before they can build a hundred gem-gen items actually means that the endgame should be shorter if people are not stuck in terminal turtle mode.

If you spend a lot of time fighting, scripting a single large complicated army can take an hour or more. That and incentives to turtle should be the place where people should be spending their energies if they want to cut down MM.

Originally Posted by Burnsaber

IMHO, if anyone loses 90% of provinces to a sneak attack, they likely just had some PD in those provinces and thought "I bought 3-5 pd and now I never have to worry about anything happening to them, ever!".

If that is the case, that guy deserved to lose. That lose was a result of that guy's own stupidity, not because he didn't have any gem gens.

Lets assume that I'm playing Eriu and you're playing someone with notoriously bad PD. (Agartha maybe?) There is no amount of PD that will stop a sidhe lord with a vine shield and a frost brand, a decent bless, and appropriate buffs. (Mistform generally) I can have a lot of Sidhe Lords - more than you have provinces. Those sidhe lords can sneak and cloud trapeze. Its completely reasonable an Eriu attack deprives Agartha of every province that doesn't have a castle or army sitting in it before Agartha even knows there's a war on, plus as many armies as their main armies can destroy. (Eriu can even field armies that sneak, and are glamoured so you'd never know they were at your door regardless).

Even if Eriu can't take your fortresses/armies for a large number of turns, you've lost the game right there because you just lost most of your gem production, and Eriu is hardly the only nation who can do that.