playing ANYONE against everyone

[Xietor]

The problem i have with MA ctis, is holding water squares. You cannot buy pd, and if you hire indies they die of disease.

Obviously you could try to have a horde of undead in every square, but that gets expensive. And on land, you would like to hire some good indies, like cross bowmen. But they die of disease as well. maybe if you took a pretender that could heal, but that would be micromanaging hell.

I doubt Ctis could keep gift of health up, or get the chalice.

[Shovah32]

I would probably go for LA Ulm with some growth just because i like them and they grow into a great late-game power(almost every count you summon increases your blood income for yet more counts until all your huntable provinces are being hunted in)

[Graeme Dice]

Of course the issue with LA Ulm is that counts aren't really good for anything besides blood hunting.

R'Lyeh is one of the few nations with access to W/N mages, so it will always be one of the most powerful in the late game.

[Evilhomer]

In part i agree with you, nations with access to either clams (+ astral) or blood stones(+ earth gems), or just plain blood hunting will have a good chance in a game as big as this.

[Gandalf Parker]

W/N?
For some reason Oceania always did very well in the AI tests.

[Xietor]

While making a 100 clams may be a great strategy, it is another perfect example of how to kill the fun of a game to me. I think i would rather lose, flying my gorgon around and leading armies with banelords etc, then to micromanage some mages to generate pearls.

ideally, i would like to see the number of such gem producing items limited to a few per race. Clam generation also minimizes the importance of some pretenders that generate gems, global spells that generate gems, and actually hunting for gems with spells.

I realize that making clams is a valid strategy, but it is one, for the sake of fun, i would like to see nerfed. Tlk about a buzz kill.

[Shovah32]

LA ulm counts not useful for anything other than bloodhunting? With a high dominion fountain of blood you can have stealthy, flying squads of counts and vampires flying around risk free. You can have counts flying around to raise skeletons a few times, die and do it again next turn or my personal favourite get as many counts as you find neccesary and set them to fly in and either summon lammashtas, attack closest(in friendly dominion) or summon lammashtas, retreat(the lammashta fear often auto-routs counts but the lammashtas fight on so no problems).

When your blood hunters who are scattered around you empire are flying, stealthy, immortal, army leading, skeleton/lammashta raising, raiders who can fairly easily be turned into thugs you can be pretty versatile if you maintain your dominion levels. With my sleeping fountain of blood i can also get all blood royalty other than demon lords while having dom8 and nice scales(and i can also forge soul contracts early). The ideal defence situation is having an enemy army attack you in your dominion and hitting it turn after turn with flying, immortal counts and vampires(along with vampire lords who are even better thugs due to soul vortex).

[Hellboy]

Xietor said:
While making a 100 clams may be a great strategy, it is another perfect example of how to kill the fun of a game to me. I think i would rather lose, flying my gorgon around and leading armies with banelords etc, then to micromanage some mages to generate pearls.

Well, that's a matter of taste, I think

ideally, i would like to see the number of such gem producing items limited to a few per race. Clam generation also minimizes the importance of some pretenders that generate gems, global spells that generate gems, and actually hunting for gems with spells.

It would be cool if that were moddable (and maybe it is?). I would expect it would be straightforward to mod such that clams (and related items) don't exist. If you're playing with trusted players it should be quite easy to incorporate this as a house rule.

I realize that making clams is a valid strategy, but it is one, for the sake of fun, i would like to see nerfed. Tlk about a buzz kill.

Well, again, it may be a buzz kill for you, but some of us really enjoy the economic elements that forged generators add to the game. Oh, and btw, all the generators did get significantly nerfed between Dom2 and Dom3.

[Graeme Dice]

Xietor said:
I think i would rather lose, flying my gorgon around and leading armies with banelords etc, then to micromanage some mages to generate pearls.

There's essentially no micromanagement. You build a few per turn, and put them on one of your researchers that don't already have one. You then press the pool astral pearls button once a turn.

ideally, i would like to see the number of such gem producing items limited to a few per race.

Let's not further neuter magic if we can avoid it. It's a strategy that only works under a very specific set of circumstances, which is why I've brought it up in both of these threads related to winning massive long-term games.

Clam generation also minimizes the importance of some pretenders that generate gems, global spells that generate gems, and actually hunting for gems with spells.

It does no such thing. The better your gem income, the faster you can build clams. A water gem income of 1 per turn is 15 times slower to start than a water gem income of 15.

I realize that making clams is a valid strategy, but it is one, for the sake of fun, i would like to see nerfed. Tlk about a buzz kill.

The two game settings where I've discussed clams in the past week are already kind of a "buzzkill". It's also already been seriously nerfed to the point where you need on the order of 50 turns or more before you start to turn a profit. They are set on huge maps where you won't see any serious opposition for 20 turns or more. People will be dropping out of these games constantly.

[Rytek]

Sauromatia.