New and improved poll about Clam hoarding.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by rabelais:
Killing two phoenixes with one hand grenade, I think what we might do is let water gems have a low/med level pop renewal effect. This would create a different kind of problem (pop farming?) but I'm confident our thanatonic devs would keep it from being *unseemily* profitable

If there was a water gem-consuming ritual or global that had a greatly enhancing effect on population growth, particularly in synergy with growth scale, I would DEFINITELY be seriously considering this as an alternative to clamming or a living nation. As it stands, however, even if you do not backfeed(transmute astral back to water for more clams), you will want to produce clams using just your natural water gem income simply because water gems are more or less otherwise useless except for forging some items, but these are desirable only in limited quantity.

And if you just produce clams using natural water income, and have decent water income, you WILL be able to compete with somebody playing a clamhoard strategy: Astral Pearls are utilized very inefficiently. Ever notice how most Astral spells cost way more than their actual effective value? Ether Gate is 90 astral gems. Angelic Hosts are 50. Neither of these pack the killing power, say, an Ice Devil, which carries a price tag of about 50 blood slaves (blood slaves can be viewed as having an exchange rate no worse than 2.5:1 slaves:astral), which means an Ice Devil, pre-equipment, carries a price tag comparable to 20S, possibly less. Even equipping expenses won't make their cost equal to that of an Ether Gate, which is not as impressive. Astral gems can only be utilized inefficiently. It is the complete worthlessness of water gems that promotes their use in such a manner. I don't even always "clamhoard", in the sense of transmuting astrals back to waters: In many games, I've just produced them with available water income, transmuting only to make an even production run(no more than one clam is paid for by more than 50% transmutated gems per turn). I mean, what ELSE do you do with water gems? I don't need THAT many boots of quickness.

[lonewolf]

I think the three main issues are:

1) the aesthetic of clam-hoarding - some people just think it's a boring way to play the game.

2) the mechanism of clam-hoarding - does it promote success so well that it becomes a primary strategy (i.e. one that is seen as superior to most)? if so, is this actual (testable) or virtual (matter of perception only)?

3) the item itself - is it too cheap or too expensive, and if so, to what extent?

So I would poll along these three axes, with a space for further comment on each of the three. But I'm not going to, because it seems to take up more space than it's worth...

[Yossar]

Originally posted by rabelais:
Did this breakage occur before or after someone got to casting Wish? (Which is by definition, long tradition, and intuitively blatantly *intended* to break the game.

I'm curious about this as well. If Wish were taken out would clam hoarding still be overpowered? Most of the really useful things to do with astral gems (teleport, astral window, gateway, dome of arcane warding, vengeance of the dead, battle spells, forging, etc) are cheap and as Norfleet mentions, the high end spells are generally overpriced. So most of the time you should be able to get by on normal astral income. You can, of course convert pearls to other gems, but that's a bit inefficient. So once again, my question:

Do the people who think that clams are overpowered think they still would be if Wish weren't available?

[ May 06, 2004, 06:33: Message edited by: Yossar ]

[BugRoger]

Well, yes. Isn't the purpose of clam hording to be able to cast Wish(s) each turn? In long games it seems it only comes down to wishing the **** out of each other. I wouldn't spend a single thought about clam hording in a "no wish" game.

Calmon recently showed me a game in which he faces a VQ that was buffed with 8 wishes for magic power. Let that sink in...

Also I think the high end astral spells are only overpriced if you don't have clams at all.