Two Birds with One Stone Suggestion

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by PvK:
Just increasing the gem cost might be sufficient, too. Adjust the math that was done - seems like there must be a balance point. 20 Water gems? 40? 20 Water + 10 or 20 Astral? I sort of think 20 Water would blunt the problem, but I'd want to see the resulting change in the numbers that were done before.

20 Water makes Clams Atlantis-only, really. That means it requires a Water-3 Mage to Forge (or 2 with FotA). Not only does Atlantis have the only National Water-3 Mages, it also has a 1/8 chance of having Earth-2 Mages, which enable the Earth Boots/Dwarven Hammer progression.

10W10S, OTOH, hands the Clams to Rlyeh. Not just Rlyeh, but Arco and Pythium (Arco more than Pythium, though). Atlantis doesn't lose that much, thanks to the Deep Seers. Caelum loses out, unless they play with a Pretender made to make Clams. Tien Chi would use their Jade Emperor.

Another possible solution is to have the Clam automatically graft to the forger. This sort of makes use of Gandalf's idea, but takes it further. Clearly, if Clams are unremovable (and auto-attach to Forger), then the number of Clams a given player can have, max, is twice the number of Mages able to Forge the Clam (barring bizarre Misc. slots).

A weird effect of this is to make the Robe of the Sea more useful, as a Water-1 mage with it could Forge 2 Clams, as opposed to only the one if they had a Water Bracelet.

Of course, the most radical idea I have is to simply make the Pearls unremovable (you'd probably want to do this to all items/Pretenders that auto-produce Gems/Pearls). Those items would then change from an investment opportunity to more of a battlefield-enhancer. If this was done, I'd hope to see at least one gem-producing item per path (except probably blood slaves... though that would fix the Blood Sacrifice problem).

I note that this thread has completely derailed from its original intent. Ah well; I guess it happens. Does anyone think the item-destruction ideas are good?

Scott

[Tris]

Clams only work when equipped on mages?

Rationale: Magic flows more strongly around a mage, the clam uses this energy to create astral pearls.

Effect: Stops Scouts and other cheap things being able to hold clams. Makes upkeep for dedicated clam holders more expensive, while still keeping clams just as useful for mages to carry around to supply them with gems in the field.

Would help a bit? I think?

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Tris:
Clams only work when equipped on mages?

Rationale: Magic flows more strongly around a mage, the clam uses this energy to create astral pearls.

Effect: Stops Scouts and other cheap things being able to hold clams. Makes upkeep for dedicated clam holders more expensive, while still keeping clams just as useful for mages to carry around to supply them with gems in the field.

Would help a bit? I think?

Wouldn't help with clams, imo. Typically you have a regular fleet of mages all researching, especially with the nations that are prone to clam hoarding.

But if it were done for all gem producing items, it might be an idea - no more black servant or other petty undead being used for fever fetishes, for example.

[LintMan]

Originally posted by Cainehill:
But if it were done for all gem producing items, it might be an idea - no more black servant or other petty undead being used for fever fetishes, for example.

You'd still be able to drop them on Revenants and Spectres (cheap 9/10 death gem mage summons) pretty easily, and you'd get at least some value out of them as researchers while they also carry the fetishes.

But I strongly suspect that fever fetishes are going to no longer work on undead in the next patch. (I have no inside info: I just remember seeing a few forum Posts by one of the illwinter guys being surprised that they worked on undead, and implying that was in need of correction.)

[Maltrease]

Here's another idea for clams. What if we treated them similar to the "seeing" orb in LOTR.

You can have a cheap water thaumaturgy spell ("Seeing Pool"... or something) that gives you an "Astral Window" into every provence that contains a clam. Perhaps it could Last for one turn for each clam found in the provence.

You could still make a strategy out of building clams but you wouldn't be able to do it in secret. I'm not sure how many distance attack spells will effect underwater provences, but this would certainly make the land nations think twice before forging lots of clams.

[Vynd]

It seems to me that Bayushi's theft spell would make it hard for a non-water nation to hang onto any items, if a water nation decides to target them for large-scale theft.

I like the idea of making Water a more powerful school, and a theft spell of some sort could be neat. But not one that is so easy to cast. How about having an item-theft combat spell instead of a ritual? That'd make it significantly trickier to use well, especially if the mage needs to have an open item slot for whatever he randomly targets.

[ May 31, 2004, 03:31: Message edited by: Vynd ]