The next patch

[AhhhFresh]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

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Originally posted by AhhhFresh:
Without wish as the light at the end of tunnel, I don't think there is anyway that a person solely focused on getting 100 clams by turn 70 or whatever is going to win a competative MP game.

It's not turn 70, it's turn 60 or sooner. Most likely by turn 40 if the person has good water income.

Like I've already said, there's really no use for water gems. You don't need dozens of quickness boots if your mages already have water magic, murdering winter is useful, but only against a limited subset of your opponent's armies, and the water summons are fairly pathetic. Sea trolls have horrendous attack and defense stats. Now your astral gems on the other hand are going to be useful to you, but by spending only your water gems and those astral gems from the clams, you will have built your 100 clams by turn 38 of the progression. That means that you've given up 380 water gems, but it will have more than paid for itself just 8 turns later.

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But the gems are only a small aspect of the total cost of clam hoarding. I agree that water gems are of limited utility.

For R'lyeh, you're talking about a 280 gp spellcaster(who needs a random to land in water) for each dedicated clam forger... that upkeep cost (which is not small), as well as the fact that they're not researching, or using that Astral 3-4 to win battles or gatewaying your troops to the front lines or whatever...

If you're not using the astral income to cast/forge astral things (ie Wish)... then cut it in half, which doesn't seem so impressive to me.

Especially when you consider the research you've lost in those 40 turns...

EDIT: Just pointing out that in this case, we're talking about sacrificing ~1000 RP's over 38 turns for these 100 clams. And during these 38 turns, the clams are providing no benefit other than begetting more clams.

[ April 06, 2004, 20:28: Message edited by: AhhhFresh ]

[Daynarr]

How about just doubling the cost of clams? That way it will take longer to hoard clams, which makes lots of difference in MP.

[Daynarr]

[quote]Originally posted by AhhhFresh:

Especially when you consider the research you've lost in those 40 turns...

True, Wish has to be researched.
I really wonder how can somebody make enough mages to produce clams, produce army that will conquer more land to get more water gem income, cover your borders so someone just doesn't walk over you (it shows in graphs if you have small army), get mages to search those provinces to find magic sites, research all the way to level 4 construction and level 9 alteration and do it all in 40 turns.
I'm sorry to say it but I just don't believe that is possible. It may be possible to get such gem income but you research will be practically 0 and you will have no army to speak off after first 40 turns.

[AhhhFresh]

[quote]Originally posted by Daynarr:

quote:

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Originally posted by AhhhFresh:

Especially when you consider the research you've lost in those 40 turns...

True, Wish has to be researched.
I really wonder how can somebody make enough mages to produce clams, produce army that will conquer more land to get more water gem income, cover your borders so someone just doesn't walk over you (it shows in graphs if you have small army), get mages to search those provinces to find magic sites, research all the way to level 4 construction and level 9 alteration and do it all in 40 turns.
I'm sorry to say it but I just don't believe that is possible. It may be possible to get such gem income but you research will be practically 0 and you will have no army to speak off after first 40 turns.

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Besides the research you lose (~1000), you also need 50 commanders to hold the damn things... who need to be sitting on a lab to make the clams useful.

[Duncanish]

What if Clams only had a chance to produce a Pearl, rather than the guaranteed 1 per turn? Maybe 25% chance per turn or something? Just a suggestion from someone who's never experienced hoarding. But it wouldn't really break them, and it wouldn't completely nerf them either. Less of a payoff, even with a huge number available, and you wouldn't be guaranteed to have the number of pearls you need when you might need them.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Jasper:

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Originally posted by Chris Byler:
However, there's another issue that I think is being overlooked. Graeme has said several times that "there is nothing else to do with your water gems besides forge clams" (or words to that effect) and therefore you are not hurting your military power by using water gems for clam forging.

Cleary an exaggeration IMHO. There are definitely usefull things to do with water gems, and not using them does have a cost. Sea Trolls, Water Queens, Frost Blades, Quickness boots, Quickening, Frozen Heart, and Murdering Winter are all effective. The contention that Murdering Winter isn't usefull borders on ludicrious IMHO.

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Well, that's what I thought too. So why aren't the clam hoarders getting steamrolled when they dump half their total gem income into clams and then dump the clam income into more clams? Is it just the water nations doing this because it's too hard to attack them before they get rolling?

If that's the case, some of my suggestions for Water magic would help there too. Giant Turtles would be amphibious and summonable on land or sea, so they help a nation going into or out of the water, and improving the water breathing benefit of Water mages would obviously help too, as would the one-province "anyone can breathe here" spell. If the water breathing limits aren't raised, a strong summon would at least make more effective use of the limit you have.

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In the opinion of the DomII playing community, is this statement correct? And if so, isn't THAT the real problem? Water was too weak in Dom I - everyone agreed on that. Is it still too weak? And if so, shouldn't it be strengthened?

I definitely agree that water is the weakest path, although not by so much as I used to think.

I like the ideas you have for improving it, especially the new summons and passive abilities. Another way would be to lower the casting level of some existing spells, as one of the things really hampering water is the lack of usefull lower levels spells.

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That would also lower their effective fatigue cost for mages of any given level - good.

I'd also like to see a mini Falling Frost available at a lower research level. It's a long time from Cold Bolt to Falling Frost, and other paths have already gotten several more combat options by the time FF becomes available.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Daynarr:
I really wonder how can somebody make enough mages to produce clams, produce army that will conquer more land to get more water gem income, cover your borders so someone just doesn't walk over you (it shows in graphs if you have small army)

(Italics are mine)

Keep in mind that many MP games, people turn off the graphs, and I can see why, even if I prefer the graphs.

First, as you say - it allows you to know everyone's army sizes. Their magical research. The number of provinces. Why? (This is more of a complaint to Illwinter, mind you.)

Most similar strategy games only only you see see the other nations/races/competitors progress if you have made contact with them. Some, only if you have spies or other diplomatic presence in their capitols - I wish Illwinter would do something along those lines, because as is, the graphs provide way too much information (in the military intelligence sense) for free.

Just to illustrate the absurdity of this - think of Vanheim, or Pangaea. You can't even _see_ their troops, but somehow you know their military strength? The graphs, as they are, are fine for SP games, but not for MP.

Especially since, as Norfleet has pointed out, the human gamers often get too discouraged when they see how far behind everyone they are, at which point, some of them quit, or worse, simply drop out without even turning things over to the AI.

Anyways - I digress. My point was that in a good portion of the MP games out there, you wouldn't know that someone was simply sitting in hiding hoarding gems, because the graphs aren't on.

Heh. But maybe we could get _new_ graphs showing exactly how many of each gem type every nation has? Then you could tell if someone was hoarding gems. If the graphs were turned on. (And it would make at _least_ as much sense as being able to determine how far along other people's magic research was, given that the gems might give off some emanation.)

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
So why aren't the clam hoarders getting steamrolled when they dump half their total gem income into clams and then dump the clam income into more clams?

Fact is, in competitive games, these players usually are steamrolled. I've met this strategy since the early days of Dominions 1 (3 or 4 years ago?), and used it myself to a limited extent on a few occasions - although the main reason was to provide fuel for the then all-powerful Gateway when my astral income was subpar. But I never resorted to alchemizing astral to water to clams to do this, I merely used the surplus of water gems I had no immediate use for. The few players I've seen do extreme clamhoarding like described in this thread always lagged behind because of the sluggish ROI.

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen:

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Originally posted by Teraswaerto:
Limiting the amount of Clams that can exist in the world at the same time would stop excessive hoarding while still leaving Clams useful.

No, it would merely impose an artificial restraint causing people to race for clams before somebody else cornered the market on a scarce resource.

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You can limit ammount of claims _per pleyer_ (and call them Lesser Artifacts). Than the "race" that you describe would not be a problem. But as I said before, it would require more coding than changing clam price.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
All recent MP games I have been in have had victory conditions set. Either by VP or dominion. They didn't Last very long (20-60 turns).

I think VP's is a good workaround on the clam hoarding. Let him hoard while I grab these VP sites. Battles for VP's will change the goals of the players and the way the game is played.

I dont see a need to "fix" every way of winning the game as long as its not an automatic obvious choice. It kills a game for me to discover that there is strategy which will always win.

Which leaves me still undecided on this subject. On the one hand, game settings can make it not such a major deal which makes it not a major fix need IMHO. On the other hand it sounds as though its killer enough to make one type of games in Dom2, a rather popular type of games, to be less chosen or a fairly easy win. So it sounds like some sort of change might be good.