Exploit question

[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.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Psycho

The CMB doesn't balance nations. Especially with the removal of gem gems (which I am all for BTW) the nations are unbalanced in a completely different way than in the vanilla game - bandar, machaka and the like weakened, blood nations made stronger due to fewer gems (which can probably be offset by higher magic settings), etc.

As an aside, if you want to weaken blood magic you would probably increase both magic site % and income/resources/supply %. By linearly scaling up everything EXCEPT population, you are effectively just decreasing population, which means weaker blood nations. Conversely, on minimal-income map settings, blood nations would dominate since they're the only ones who can efficiently convert population into units.

-Max

[LDiCesare]

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

As an aside, if you want to weaken blood magic you would probably increase both magic site % and income/resources/supply %. By linearly scaling up everything EXCEPT population, you are effectively just decreasing population, which means weaker blood nations. Conversely, on minimal-income map settings, blood nations would dominate since they're the only ones who can efficiently convert population into units.

-Max

Actually, magic site % has an effect on blood hunt if tests run on ForgeOfGodhood, so changing it wouldn't strengthen nor weaken blood economy.

[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?

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Kuritza]

Yes, they fall out here amongst other things. ))))) But at least they benefit from clams greatly.
Before the clam nerf, I saw them as an initially weak, potentially very dangerous race with many interesting possibilities. Some of them I have found in Baalz's guide, but sticking to them as your main strategy would be plain suicidal. With some luck, monkeys may even leave the ranks of chronic losers before its too late for them and clams are gone... alas, there's a small obstacle represented by Toran's Pythium in their way. )))))

Originally Posted by Sombre

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

Only Bandar Log. ))) Others have already scored some victories.

[Maerlande]

The problem is that people haven't realized that Ghanas are the go to troops for Bandar Log and all this theorizing just misses the point.

Bandar Log is a death nation. D9 white ones rule the world.

Or really crank up the action with B9D9. I've tested it against Agartha and Oceania and it rocks. Wins every time in single player. Although I did have to boost the AI's by setting independents to 9.