The next patch

[AhhhFresh]

Not only death - Astral magic protects vs Soul Slay, Nature magic protects vs Charm, etc. You get +1 bonus for every 2 levels in the relevant path.

empahsis mine

Presumably that Astral bonus applies to paralyze resistance as well?

That would explain why my astrally strong Void Lord in an MP game was able to wipe out an Arco army that had several mages spamming paralyze and soul slays...

I'm curious as to what exactly happened (I thought he was toast), but the replay bug... c'est la vie.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally posted by Stormbinder:

But if clams would be changed by making them a bit harder to make (like 10 water 5 nature, or one of the many other suggestions on this thread), than the first group of people would not be affected much. But for the 2nd group of people, who liek to play differnt game types and for whom clams are a big issue, this type of fix would be extremely beneficial.

Except that this is not, as you suggest, making astral clams "a bit harder" to make - it is making them much, much, harder to make for most nations due to lacking paths and increasing their cost by 50% - and making them take 7.5/15/30 (depends on how you count) rounds rather than 5/10/20 to pay off (sans dwarven hammer). In such a situation they would not really be worth making except if you were basing your strategy around them and the acquisition on WWN mages, rather than the situation now where they can be used (but not necessarily abused) by players for whom they are not the focus of the playing strategy.

I dislike the idea that the "solution" to what I perceive as a playing-style issue (players not attacking each other ruthlessly enough allowing nations to allocate resources to go clam-crazy with dire results in very long games) should be to make the clams all but useless in general.

[Kelan]

Perhaps something as simple as removing the ability to alchemize astral gems to water gems could work, or increasing the ratio to 4 or 5 to 1 or something.

This would allow people to still create clams with their natural water gem income, and help curb the abuse of hoarding clams in the ways explained here.

[Teraswaerto]

Limiting the amount of Clams that can exist in the world at the same time would stop excessive hoarding while still leaving Clams useful.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally posted by Teraswaerto:
Limiting the amount of Clams that can exist in the world at the same time would stop excessive hoarding while still leaving Clams useful.

No, it would merely impose an artificial restraint causing people to race for clams before somebody else cornered the market on a scarce resource.

[Teraswaerto]

What's "artificial" in this context? If the limit was high enough it wouldn't be an issue unless someone was attempting the kind of hoarding that makes Clams problematic.

[atul]

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
Unfotunatly with graphs disabled (as most people play their MP) there is no way of knowing if the person is hording the clams or not.

(uh-oh, more water into mill, but...) You sure the gems from clams or fewer fetishes shows on graphs? I'm in a MP where I've got a moderate amount of clams and the main benefit imho has been that income from them hasn't appeared in the graphs, which are on for some reason. Same as your blood income, as it doesn't go directly to the treasury but to individual commanders, it doesn't show.

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
And killing every nation with astral and water income in the begining of the game is not a good answer to clam-abusing strategy.

I thought the early killing of every nation heavy on astral was one of the main points of long-term survival, clams or no clams... ;p