Exploit question

[Mardagg]

[quote=fantasma;723253]but what about late game with limited gems? You'd probably see dragged out stalemates until somebody lucks in keeping a game-winning global up? Everybody is forced to invest in blood? Castling every province to keep the defense bonus and get spawning summons everywhere?

QUOTE]

You would see....diversity!

And about limited gems...e.g. 200 gems per turn should be still enough for lot of end game action+ you can play bigger maps or increase magic sites if you want more.

-Games may last longer on average,but since the turns take less time to play without microing gem gens,thats ok imo.
-Blood isnt nearly as game breaking as having say 300+astral income per turn.Skipping Blood,or only going very small into it, is perfectly viable imo.Also ,as i said earlier,if more players compete for Blood,Blood becomes weaker bc of the limited summons+you cant alchemize it.
-Game winning globals are very tough to cast without clams.
You would risk to be a lot behind in other areas to do that.
Dont forget,u can still alchemize your other gems for astral if you have to dispel that nasty global,the opponent just put up.
-tartarian commanders will be fewer in numbers,bc wishing for the chalice will be tough,and GoH will only be possible for good nature nations.
-National troops will be more useful in end game since everyone has less powerful magic troops.
-Expansion will probably be more important right from the start,since more provinces=more gems.
Waging war early will become more profitable again,but turtling still remains an option because of superior research.
-Players losing a war and wishing for armageddon before going AI wont be seen.

[Belac]

Originally Posted by Mardagg

You would see....diversity!

And about limited gems...e.g. 200 gems per turn should be still enough for lot of end game action+ you can play bigger maps or increase magic sites if you want more.

-Games may last longer on average,but since the turns take less time to play without microing gem gens,thats ok imo.
-Blood isnt nearly as game breaking as having say 300+astral income per turn.Skipping Blood,or only going very small into it, is perfectly viable imo.Also ,as i said earlier,if more players compete for Blood,Blood becomes weaker bc of the limited summons+you cant alchemize it.
-Game winning globals are very tough to cast without clams.
You would risk to be a lot behind in other areas to do that.
Dont forget,u can still alchemize your other gems for astral if you have to dispel that nasty global,the opponent just put up.
-tartarian commanders will be fewer in numbers,bc wishing for the chalice will be tough,and GoH will only be possible for good nature nations.
-National troops will be more useful in end game since everyone has less powerful magic troops.
-Expansion will probably be more important right from the start,since more provinces=more gems.
Waging war early will become more profitable again,but turtling still remains an option because of superior research.
-Players losing a war and wishing for armageddon before going AI wont be seen.

That sounds awesome, actually. Late-game would be more different for each nation, and nations wouldn't be locked into all the same strategies.

[Baalz]

Yep, I called it. Fell deep into troll territory.

Dominions without gem gens isn't worth playing because you have no options

Everyone is forced to play with the latest version of CBM despite the fact many people wish they could just play vanilla

Nations with troops having obvious weaknesses are unplayable

Come on now, what's the point of trying to argue with somebody who vehemently asserts and defends positions such as these? I would offer to show him that monkey troops can be far from worthless but its pointless. Bandar vs Marginon? Sure, just fight under iron bane for a great equalizer. Toss in a couple other support spells and watch markatas tear the living crap out of dual blessed Knights of the Chalice while any Marignon support mage with more than F1 evaporates under magic duels anytime they step out of a castle. Xbows? Sure, they're pretty good against unsupported monkey PD, but you do realize Bandar has access to everything from arrow fend, storm, mist, and battle fortune to chaff spells like swarm and howl, right? Those xbows firing every other turn doing much for you now against a big swarm of berzerking monkeys? What in the holy hell do you think you're gonna bring to any real fight that is going to win, much less dominate?

But, like I said, it's a pointless discussion. Obviously he's got it all figured out and not interested in considering playing Bandar in anyway other than spamming clams until you have a never ending stream of Rudras. Or, more likely, he's trolling.

[Kuritza]

Originally Posted by Baalz

Come on now, what's the point of trying to argue with somebody who vehemently asserts and defends positions such as these? I would offer to show him that monkey troops can be far from worthless but its pointless. Bandar vs Marginon? Sure, just fight under iron bane for a great equalizer. Toss in a couple other support spells and watch markatas tear the living crap out of dual blessed Knights of the Chalice while any Marignon support mage with more than F1 evaporates under magic duels anytime they step out of a castle. Xbows? Sure, they're pretty good against unsupported monkey PD, but you do realize Bandar has access to everything from arrow fend, storm, mist, and battle fortune to chaff spells like swarm and howl, right? Those xbows firing every other turn doing much for you now against a big swarm of berzerking monkeys? What in the holy hell do you think you're gonna bring to any real fight that is going to win, much less dominate?

We have listened to yet another round of Baalz's theorycrafting, which is always very interesting and contains some valid ideas, yet sometimes just doesnt work. How come that nobody, NOBODY made it work for Bandar Log yet, huh? Unstoppable horde of wild apes, a sight to be remembered... to bad it just doesnt happen. Note that I am talking about Bandar because I have some first-hand knowledge about them in MP; there are other nations in more or less same state. Good luck winning with monkey military without massed summons against anything with real armies, really.

Another nice way of proving somebody wrong is to declare him a troll. Hi guys, my nickname is Kuritza and I am a troll. Yeah, sure. Fast expansion as the only way to win and nations with weaker military being reduced to nothing, its ok because some old players say so. For other old players too. And I am a just troll. I dont mind, well, its quite... funny. ))

Now for being constructive... one possible solution would be to ask Devs for another patch, hard-limiting each gemgen to ~50 (or something like that) per nation. Or, even better, maybe a maximum of ~100 (75, 50) gemgens of all types, so you arent oblidged to make exactly 50 bloodstones, fetishes and clams to compete with others.
Problem solved.

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Kuritza

We have listened to yet another round of Baalz's theorycrafting, which is always very interesting and contains some valid ideas, yet sometimes just doesnt work. How come that nobody, NOBODY made it work for Bandar Log yet, huh? Unstoppable horde of wild apes, a sight to be remembered... to bad it just doesnt happen. Note that I am talking about Bandar because I have some first-hand knowledge about them in MP; there are other nations in more or less same state. Good luck winning with monkey military without massed summons against anything with real armies, really.

Monkey nations can NEVER win because of their PD they can NEVER win NEVER.

[Sombre]

No he'd like to troll but he can't because a select group of players have completely taken out that part of the forums and gang up on anyone who says otherwise.

[fantasma]

Seriously, don't you think that without gem-gens game will drag out endlessly without anybody gaining significant power to win the game, especially on bigger maps?

Btw, I like the monkeys.

[Baalz]

No, that's rather a large part of getting rid of gem gens - you can actually impact people's income by attacking them thus making it easier to end the game.

[Micah]

It's funny how everyone manages to leave Niefelheim and Hinnom out of the list of nations that are hurt by gens being removed, since they're great at making them. It's not like the devs had some master plan where the crappy nations were the only ones that could make the gens, plenty of the really good nations have access as well, which means that a lot of the hand-wringing over the supposed nerfing that "clam nations" take is overwrought, since it's a lot closer to 0-sum than the alarmists would have everyone believe. (Though admittedly giving everyone more resources to work with does help weaker nations more than strong ones.) Plus it's really closer to a 0-sum game in general since everyone gets into clamming sooner or later anyhow. On the other side of the coin, some of the weak nations (MA Agartha is the poster-child here, but EA Agartha and LA Man have pretty solid claims as well) have NO access to any of the gens on their national mage paths, and they're the nations that are gonna have the hardest time affording more pretender time to diversify into the gens.

As Baalz said, removing gens is designed to link resources to holding territory, which is designed to force people to move their armies and try to hold territory instead of being able to turtle in one province with 300 gems a turn coming in. Artifacts had gens and did an admirable job getting bogged down, and Preponderance had to be dragged out back and shot because of the crazy gem spiral that developed (I was looking at hitting 40 clams/turn, which was about the most I could manage due to the 50-slot lab limit.) Seems like the new generation of games is doing a lot better in terms of progressing along.

And to paraphrase Zeldor: Gens are a really lousy way to balance weak nations, why don't we just mod them so they don't suck and are interesting to play instead of introducing a really bad mechanic that happens to help them out a little more than other nations?

[Micah]

BL isn't an easy nation to play, so I'm not surprised they haven't been leveraged that effectively. Regardless, I'm confused as to why they're even under discussion here...they don't have any capital W income for clams, no national E income for hammers, can only site search both paths manually at level one, and need to take a detour to conj-4 to get access to hammer forgers and clammers, barring a sub 1% chance of Rishi randoms, and don't have real access to the other two gens, so they seem like they come out ahead of the curve by getting rid of gens.