playing ANYONE against everyone

[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.