The next patch

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
Every nation with a water 1 national mage, or a relatively inexpensive random pick has the "apparatus" to build clams.

You're forgetting that without hammers and/or a site, it's much harder to get the ball rolling. Hammers are 20 earth gems base, and every forger needs one or the ROI goes down greatly.

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Norfleet:

quote:

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Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
Every nation with a water 1 national mage, or a relatively inexpensive random pick has the "apparatus" to build clams.

You're forgetting that without hammers and/or a site, it's much harder to get the ball rolling. Hammers are 20 earth gems base, and every forger needs one or the ROI goes down greatly.

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Not really. Only first one is 20 earth gems, every additional one almost always will cost you 15 earth gems or less, since you will be using hammer to forge new hammer, not to mention forging site that you might find.

[ April 09, 2004, 07:02: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
Not really. Only first one is 20 earth gems, every additional one almost always will cost you 15 earth gems or less, since you will be using hammer to forge new hammer, not to mention forging site that you might find.

You're forgetting that it takes at least an Earth-2 mage, normally, to produce hammers, with the aid of boots. Only a few nations are equipped with this combination (Pan, IF Ulm, Atlantis) normally, and a few others might get access if they got very lucky with randoms. R'lyeh Starspawns are, unfortunately, excluded due to their unfortunate lack of feet that renders them unable to use Earth boots.

If anything, Atlantis is the definitive clam-hoarding nation, having everything required to make clams: Linked randoms on a King of the Deep that can easily roll Earth, cheap water-1 nationals, protected, underwater base, and home province water income as a seed.

So if clam-hoarding is so overwhelmingly powerful, why is Atlantis not much more popular?

[ April 09, 2004, 08:45: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
They are very similar in cost, when you consider the gold spent on upkeep and purchasing, and don't consider the astral pearls from clams as part of the cost. After all, they are entirely free after 20 turns. Those mages cost 4000 gold, and the troops alone had an upkeep of 150. The water gem cost was around 140. That kind of conventional army should be able to destroy any lone unit with only minimal losses, or there is a serious balance problem.

By that logic, the astral pearls on YOUR clams are also free, and obviously, you've chosen to utilize them this way instead. Don't tell me you don't have them, you're Atlantis, *THE* top clam hoarding nation.

Furthermore, your army was tailored for a very poor fit against your opposition: Water mages, who are nearly entirely reliant on cold attacks for their battlefield spells, are very useless against a cold-immune target with high protection. They may as well have been complete non-participants, as you effectively sent them to their deaths.

Sea trolls are rather poor combatants for their cost: Their protection is substandard, and they generally underperform compared to standard trolls. The Sea King itself is a pure water mage, and suffers from the above....not to mention the number of casualties you inflicted on yourself by not isolating these dangerous, prone to Breath of Wintering water mages. Their only strength lies in the ability to be summoned on land and then marched into the sea to invade sea provinces...an advantage you more or less throw away by using them to fight on land. I do not think my empowered prestige pretender would have been necessary to drive your forces back into the sea: The ordinary, default model I started with should have been adequate, given the absolutely lousy force composition you chose for the job.

Look on the bright side: At least your upkeep is lower now.

[ April 09, 2004, 08:55: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Norfleet:

quote:

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Originally posted by Stormbinder:
Not really. Only first one is 20 earth gems, every additional one almost always will cost you 15 earth gems or less, since you will be using hammer to forge new hammer, not to mention forging site that you might find.

You're forgetting that it takes at least an Earth-2 mage, normally, to produce hammers, with the aid of boots.

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I am not forgeting it. But you are forgeting the fact that it was you who mentioned hammers in the first place in realtions to clam forging, and you have said that it takes 20 earth gem to make them. I was simply correcting you, since if you are capable of making 1 hammer obviously you are capable of making another. Availabilty of hammers is entirely different topic from their gem cost.

[ April 09, 2004, 11:43: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
By that logic, the astral pearls on YOUR clams are also free, and obviously, you've chosen to utilize them this way instead. Don't tell me you don't have them, you're Atlantis, *THE* top clam hoarding nation.

I have not built a single clam, since I consider it too cheesy.

Furthermore, your army was tailored for a very poor fit against your opposition: Water mages, who are nearly entirely reliant on cold attacks for their battlefield spells, are very useless against a cold-immune target with high protection.

And I suppose you know of some other national mages that Atlantis can use then?

The ordinary, default model I started with should have been adequate, given the absolutely lousy force composition you chose for the job.

Your original pretender would have had no more than about 100 hitpoints, and would have had only 4 mirror images on a defense of around 10. If I was building clams, then I would have had a whole bunch of herald lances on initiates of the deep, which I know from experience can defeat a standard issue VQ. Of course, my major problem was that I got the useless water elementals instead of the much more useful ice elementals.

[ April 09, 2004, 15:06: Message edited by: Graeme Dice ]

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
I have not built a single clam, since I consider it too cheesy.

So you willfully squander your national resources over a belief in what you see as "cheese" instead of playing the game as written. That is certainly your perogative, but does not figure into a rational analysis.

And I suppose you know of some other national mages that Atlantis can use then?

The sheer amount of research you were giving up on such an excursion, towing around an entire boatload of mages, must have been immense. Me, I never tow around mages, particularly mages that I know have no effective magics, into a battle unless I need a very specific spell cast, when they could instead be generating research...unless you are finished with all of your research?

Your original pretender would have had no more than about 100 hitpoints, and would have had only 4 mirror images on a defense of around 10. If I was building clams, then I would have had a whole bunch of herald lances on initiates of the deep, which I know from experience can defeat a standard issue VQ. Of course, my major problem was that I got the useless water elementals instead of the much more useful ice elementals.

I think that even my basic starting air-4 gets me a lot more than 4 mirror images. And I'm surprised you didn't have herald lances anyway. It's not like they're expensive, hard-to-get items, and if you're choosing to use them on initiates, which are capitol only, as opposed to the more available, and disposable, scouts, you're not going to need that many.

And of course you got water elementals instead of ice ones. You have forgotten that the Mictlan climate is warm, not cold?

[ April 09, 2004, 16:31: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
So you willfully squander your national resources over a belief in what you see as "cheese" instead of playing the game as written. That is certainly your perogative, but does not figure into a rational analysis.

It also illustrates the weakness of water magic, since the only effective thing to do with it in the very long term is to turn it into astral pearls.

The sheer amount of research you were giving up on such an excursion, towing around an entire boatload of mages, must have been immense.

Sure, it would have been large in the early game, but by this point it isn't much of an expense. This is still an illustration of an imbalance, since no single unit should be able to destroy an army made up of the toughest summons that are available to that nation, and certainly not one backed up by multiple mages with ninth level spells researched.

I think that even my basic starting air-4 gets me a lot more than 4 mirror images. And I'm surprised you didn't have herald lances anyway.

They are very expensive, since they are 10 astral pearls, and astral is the most generally useful magic.

And of course you got water elementals instead of ice ones. You have forgotten that the Mictlan climate is warm, not cold?

Did you happen to notice the snow on the ground in that battle? I would have thought that that would have been enough to cause ice elementals to form.

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Norfleet:

quote:

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Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
I have not built a single clam, since I consider it too cheesy.

So you willfully squander your national resources over a belief in what you see as "cheese" instead of playing the game as written. That is certainly your perogative, but does not figure into a rational analysis.

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Norfleet, I think you keep confusing "wining" the game with having fun from playing it. Granted, it is possible than for you one equal another. But personally I try never to use "cheesy" tactics in my games, because it spoils the fun for me, since I know that I am mostly wining not because of my skill and intelligence, but because I am abusing very simple and overpowered strategy again and again.

And yes, there are cheesy strategies in any strategy games, and I've played a lot of them. Dom2 is much more balanced in this respect that average strategic game, but it doesn't mean it has zero cheesy and/or abusive strategies. Clams is by far the most obvious example of it.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

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Originally posted by Norfleet:
So you willfully squander your national resources over a belief in what you see as "cheese" instead of playing the game as written. That is certainly your perogative, but does not figure into a rational analysis.

It also illustrates the weakness of water magic, since the only effective thing to do with it in the very long term is to turn it into astral pearls.

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I think this is far from demonstrated. Although water could use some new tricks, "the only effective thing" is a vast overstatement.

quote:

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The sheer amount of research you were giving up on such an excursion, towing around an entire boatload of mages, must have been immense.

Sure, it would have been large in the early game, but by this point it isn't much of an expense. This is still an illustration of an imbalance, since no single unit should be able to destroy an army made up of the toughest summons that are available to that nation, and certainly not one backed up by multiple mages with ninth level spells researched.

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Oh, you had Water Queens and Abominations in that battle? They weren't mentioned in the previous post. Sea Trolls are far from "the toughest summons available" to ANY nation. Granted, some of the toughest summons available to Atlantis are aquatic (where are the items that let a commander take aquatic troops onto land? Amulet of the Fish will let Auluudh or a Nerid come out to play, but not bring Sea Serpents, War Lobsters or Crab Hybrids with them.), but they still have some better options than Sea Trolls.

quote:

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I think that even my basic starting air-4 gets me a lot more than 4 mirror images. And I'm surprised you didn't have herald lances anyway.

They are very expensive, since they are 10 astral pearls, and astral is the most generally useful magic.

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I wouldn't consider a 10 gem item "very expensive" - certainly not compared to multiple-Wished VQs and their equipment.

quote:

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And of course you got water elementals instead of ice ones. You have forgotten that the Mictlan climate is warm, not cold?

Did you happen to notice the snow on the ground in that battle? I would have thought that that would have been enough to cause ice elementals to form.

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Well, next time cast Wolven Winter to make sure. You have all those water mages and research and "useless" water gems, right?

Ice elementals, BTW, can damage cold immune creatures just fine (although they might have some problem with supercombatants).


It does seem to me that water magic isn't very useful when fighting on land against cold immune opponents, and there are a disproportionate number of cold immune monsters (and of course the vast majority of provinces are land). There are only a few water battle spells (Ice Strike, Sailors Death) that work against cold immune targets at all (castable on land, anyway), and they aren't very powerful (Sailors Death doesn't even work on inanimate targets). Worse, Atlantis's normal troops use poison weapons and armor, and the largest Category of cold immune creatures is ALSO poison immune, making their normal troops less effective too. Fire and Air don't have many ways of damaging elemental immune targets either - but there are far fewer creatures naturally immune to fire or lightning.

How about a Waterspout that stays on the battlefield for a few rounds (like the Cloud spells), crushes targets and throws them around (similar to trample)? Or a Water Jet that just deals some physical damage but doesn't require another path like Geyser? Those might not work that well against supercombatants, but they'd at least help against undead or Jotun armies.

To a certain extent, the water nations' difficulty on land counterbalances their defensive advantage in being difficult for land nations to attack. But inability to project power onto land will eventually be crippling. Furthermore, land nations that have water magic (Caelum, Jotunheim) have this problem too (although in their case there's a consolation prize - somewhat easier access to the sea than most land nations).