The next patch

[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

[AhhhFresh]

It all comes down to Wish.

Clam hoarding to the extent that people seem to be concerned about has a huge oppurtunity (as well as material) cost.

The only way that it makes sense in a strategic sense is if you are racing to chain cast wish... otherwise the impact is not significant enough to justify the cost.

Without wish as the light at the end of tunnel, I don't think there is anyway that a person solely focused on getting 100 clams by turn 70 or whatever is going to win a competative MP game. If they can get away with it, then they were already gonna win... and could have won sooner if they would have refoucsed the materials dedicated to clam forging to research/casting more immediately useful rituals.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by AhhhFresh:
Without wish as the light at the end of tunnel, I don't think there is anyway that a person solely focused on getting 100 clams by turn 70 or whatever is going to win a competative MP game.

It's not turn 70, it's turn 60 or sooner. Most likely by turn 40 if the person has good water income.

Like I've already said, there's really no use for water gems. You don't need dozens of quickness boots if your mages already have water magic, murdering winter is useful, but only against a limited subset of your opponent's armies, and the water summons are fairly pathetic. Sea trolls have horrendous attack and defense stats. Now your astral gems on the other hand are going to be useful to you, but by spending only your water gems and those astral gems from the clams, you will have built your 100 clams by turn 38 of the progression. That means that you've given up 380 water gems, but it will have more than paid for itself just 8 turns later.

[AhhhFresh]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

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Originally posted by AhhhFresh:
Without wish as the light at the end of tunnel, I don't think there is anyway that a person solely focused on getting 100 clams by turn 70 or whatever is going to win a competative MP game.

It's not turn 70, it's turn 60 or sooner. Most likely by turn 40 if the person has good water income.

Like I've already said, there's really no use for water gems. You don't need dozens of quickness boots if your mages already have water magic, murdering winter is useful, but only against a limited subset of your opponent's armies, and the water summons are fairly pathetic. Sea trolls have horrendous attack and defense stats. Now your astral gems on the other hand are going to be useful to you, but by spending only your water gems and those astral gems from the clams, you will have built your 100 clams by turn 38 of the progression. That means that you've given up 380 water gems, but it will have more than paid for itself just 8 turns later.

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But the gems are only a small aspect of the total cost of clam hoarding. I agree that water gems are of limited utility.

For R'lyeh, you're talking about a 280 gp spellcaster(who needs a random to land in water) for each dedicated clam forger... that upkeep cost (which is not small), as well as the fact that they're not researching, or using that Astral 3-4 to win battles or gatewaying your troops to the front lines or whatever...

If you're not using the astral income to cast/forge astral things (ie Wish)... then cut it in half, which doesn't seem so impressive to me.

Especially when you consider the research you've lost in those 40 turns...

EDIT: Just pointing out that in this case, we're talking about sacrificing ~1000 RP's over 38 turns for these 100 clams. And during these 38 turns, the clams are providing no benefit other than begetting more clams.

[ April 06, 2004, 20:28: Message edited by: AhhhFresh ]

[Daynarr]

How about just doubling the cost of clams? That way it will take longer to hoard clams, which makes lots of difference in MP.