The next patch

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Jasper:

quote:

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Originally posted by Chris Byler:
However, there's another issue that I think is being overlooked. Graeme has said several times that "there is nothing else to do with your water gems besides forge clams" (or words to that effect) and therefore you are not hurting your military power by using water gems for clam forging.

Cleary an exaggeration IMHO. There are definitely usefull things to do with water gems, and not using them does have a cost. Sea Trolls, Water Queens, Frost Blades, Quickness boots, Quickening, Frozen Heart, and Murdering Winter are all effective. The contention that Murdering Winter isn't usefull borders on ludicrious IMHO.

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Well, that's what I thought too. So why aren't the clam hoarders getting steamrolled when they dump half their total gem income into clams and then dump the clam income into more clams? Is it just the water nations doing this because it's too hard to attack them before they get rolling?

If that's the case, some of my suggestions for Water magic would help there too. Giant Turtles would be amphibious and summonable on land or sea, so they help a nation going into or out of the water, and improving the water breathing benefit of Water mages would obviously help too, as would the one-province "anyone can breathe here" spell. If the water breathing limits aren't raised, a strong summon would at least make more effective use of the limit you have.

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In the opinion of the DomII playing community, is this statement correct? And if so, isn't THAT the real problem? Water was too weak in Dom I - everyone agreed on that. Is it still too weak? And if so, shouldn't it be strengthened?

I definitely agree that water is the weakest path, although not by so much as I used to think.

I like the ideas you have for improving it, especially the new summons and passive abilities. Another way would be to lower the casting level of some existing spells, as one of the things really hampering water is the lack of usefull lower levels spells.

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That would also lower their effective fatigue cost for mages of any given level - good.

I'd also like to see a mini Falling Frost available at a lower research level. It's a long time from Cold Bolt to Falling Frost, and other paths have already gotten several more combat options by the time FF becomes available.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Daynarr:
I really wonder how can somebody make enough mages to produce clams, produce army that will conquer more land to get more water gem income, cover your borders so someone just doesn't walk over you (it shows in graphs if you have small army)

(Italics are mine)

Keep in mind that many MP games, people turn off the graphs, and I can see why, even if I prefer the graphs.

First, as you say - it allows you to know everyone's army sizes. Their magical research. The number of provinces. Why? (This is more of a complaint to Illwinter, mind you.)

Most similar strategy games only only you see see the other nations/races/competitors progress if you have made contact with them. Some, only if you have spies or other diplomatic presence in their capitols - I wish Illwinter would do something along those lines, because as is, the graphs provide way too much information (in the military intelligence sense) for free.

Just to illustrate the absurdity of this - think of Vanheim, or Pangaea. You can't even _see_ their troops, but somehow you know their military strength? The graphs, as they are, are fine for SP games, but not for MP.

Especially since, as Norfleet has pointed out, the human gamers often get too discouraged when they see how far behind everyone they are, at which point, some of them quit, or worse, simply drop out without even turning things over to the AI.

Anyways - I digress. My point was that in a good portion of the MP games out there, you wouldn't know that someone was simply sitting in hiding hoarding gems, because the graphs aren't on.

Heh. But maybe we could get _new_ graphs showing exactly how many of each gem type every nation has? Then you could tell if someone was hoarding gems. If the graphs were turned on. (And it would make at _least_ as much sense as being able to determine how far along other people's magic research was, given that the gems might give off some emanation.)

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
So why aren't the clam hoarders getting steamrolled when they dump half their total gem income into clams and then dump the clam income into more clams?

Fact is, in competitive games, these players usually are steamrolled. I've met this strategy since the early days of Dominions 1 (3 or 4 years ago?), and used it myself to a limited extent on a few occasions - although the main reason was to provide fuel for the then all-powerful Gateway when my astral income was subpar. But I never resorted to alchemizing astral to water to clams to do this, I merely used the surplus of water gems I had no immediate use for. The few players I've seen do extreme clamhoarding like described in this thread always lagged behind because of the sluggish ROI.

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen:

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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.

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You can limit ammount of claims _per pleyer_ (and call them Lesser Artifacts). Than the "race" that you describe would not be a problem. But as I said before, it would require more coding than changing clam price.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
So why aren't the clam hoarders getting steamrolled when they dump half their total gem income into clams and then dump the clam income into more clams?

Well, in my experience they do get steamrollered. This isn't a convincing argument however, as one can always wrangle endlessly about who's competition is better and who's really the better player, so I left it out (and I am _not_ presenting it as an argument now).

Plus, while I am confident I have some skill, I know there are players with far more experience than I. Wendigo, NGF (Jaques Vidal?), Alex Poger, and Pocus/Pythie spring immediately to mind, and I'm sure there are others as well.

[Zapmeister]

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%

Is this a good time to mention my preferred solution (water-1,nature-1) again?

[Minrhael]

Let me preface my idea by saying I haven't even gotten into an MP game yet. Since it seems most people don't want clams too heavily penalized, would it be possible to change clams into one of the artifact types that don't stack? (like, if I remember right, 2 wineskins only allow 25 supply bonus not 50 if on one commander). Then at least the initial recruiting and upkeep costs of the hoarder would increase and they'd be slowed a little by a need to recruit more commanders. If that wouldn't be enough deterrent you could combine it with one of the previous posters suggestions to make it have a %chance of success, though I'd say 25% is a bit low.

If only one clam worked per commander and it only worked 50 - 75% of the time I'd think that would slow them down enough. I don't like 25% as the clam would then be pretty useless to commanders in the field who just want a gem or two to cast battlefield spells without having to put up a lab.