Patch 'n mod

[Ivan Pedroso]

Turin said:
Take the god is a bullet game for example. I had the forge of the ancients up for ~20 turns. Together with a hammer and a forge bonus site I can forge clams for 2 water gems. Now if there hadn´t been a limit on hoard items in that game my income would be so humongous now, that the other nations wouldn´t have the slightest chance resulting in an easy win for me.

With the hoarding limiting rule there are 4 other powerful nations left, and I have to consider carefully on what I should spend my big, but not unlimited income and I´m looking forward to a very challenging endgame.

I'm C'tis in that game - and I feel that because of the limits on clams/fetishes/stones/contracts we'll have an interesting endgame.

I don't think your forge would have been up that long had it not been for those limits - but I totally agree - if there are no limitations a Forge should be dispelled ASAP. And I hope that domIII will have well balanced gem producing items, they do serve a purpose as an on-board gem surply for a battle-mage. Actually they could serve to lessen micro-management if they were only used in that way, but of cause people abuse them.

Just got an idea(sorry if it has already been proposed) :
What if gem producing items were only usable by mages with a combined magic path level of 3 or above. They are the only ones that really need gems in battle, because most spells that have a gem cost have path requirements of 3 or above (so a WSS mage could use a pearl and would thus always have some on him, and if he communions or otherwise gets boosted in astral - viola - he has the gems he needs to cast the big stuff). And there are no cheap 3-path(combined) summons to use as mules (spectral mages are 10D, and so perhaps a restriction of 4+ combined paths might work better). Could this work ? You could still slap one on a commander that didn't have the required magic skill, it just wouldn't produce any gems, if you need to transport such an item. The fantasy-rationale behind this restriction could be that it requires some skill to harness the gems from the item. You would still be able to "hoard" them, but the mules would a least not be cheap scouts etc. Or make the total combined path requirement 4, then it would be quite expensive to use more than 20 of each - and I wouldn't call 20-30 pearls in a big game "hoarding".