Tip: Template for reducing late game MM hell

[Valerius]

People always say that if you remove gem gens you have to compensate certain nations. I assume the reason for this is that those nations don't have a strong late game (if the argument is that they have a weak early game, well then clams aren't going to help them with that). But there's lots of nations that don't have a strong end game. Given that the end game is dominated by SCs, if you don't have recruitable/national summon SCs or get the Chalice/GoH you pretty much don't have an end game (maybe with the exception of someone like R'lyeh).

So rather than fix nations one by one, why not just have an SC that everyone can summon late game? In particular, I think the whole Chalice/GoH --> tart mechanic is broken so why not just have tarts as a normal SC summon? No afflictions, commander status. And if not them, then another unit. But I think tarts are a good candidate because you can't beat the efficiency of summoning an SC for 30 gems (27 CBM) - probably even if you have national summons. Basically I think there should be a default end game SC. Some nations will have SCs that are better and that's an advantage of that nation. But even if you don't have national SCs there should be something you can summon to have a fighting chance.

A word about RAND games. I think the no-diplomacy is a helpful idea but I don't think the nations have to be random. Calahan's point is a good one but if there's only certain nations you enjoy playing being stuck with a nation you don't like takes the fun out of the game. Anyway, I think settings like RAND or map size are separate from decisions about the mod contents. Guidelines could be helpful but it's easy enough to change that on a game-by-game basis.