Two Birds with One Stone Suggestion

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
I personally don't think there should be any way to get items from a commander without killing that commander and having the chance that it gets picked up.

Fair enough, but that tends towards SCing. Not criticizing, just making an observation.

What would you think of ways of destroying artifacts? Probably should be Fire. (This is specifically thematically linked towards destruction rather than disenchantment because we don't want to give this sort of ability to Astral magic.)

You might also make a Blood magic Ritual that Curses an item and Horror Marks the person holding it.

Just a few thoughts.

Scott

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Bayushi Tasogare:
What would you think of ways of destroying artifacts?

You can already wish for the artifact and throw it away if you like. Other than that, I'd rather not see any way to destroy magical items.

[LintMan]

Originally posted by Bayushi Tasogare:

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I'd use that spell to strip all the items off any enemy SC's,

Added bonus: It relieves SCs of their equipment, which really puts the hurt on SCs. I thought limiting SCs was also something on a wish list?

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Whether SC's need to be toned down is debatable, but this spell would totally nerf them, IMHO.

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and to strip large armies of their Wine bags, leaving them starving.

While more of an issue, this would make people break their armies down into smaller bites, something that I feel should be done anyway.

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I love the big honkin' armies! The massive battles are one of my favorite parts of the game!

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Even if the cost was made more in line with its power, stealing clams would be pretty low, priority-wise, because you would't be able to cast it enough to make a difference..

Really? This spell costs half as much as a Clam, so I _should_ be able to cast this twice as much, if I have the mages to do it.

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Which makes it only viable for water-magic nations to combat the clam hording?

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Also, the clam hoarder is likely far better equipped to spam this spell than his opponents would be, since he'd already have a good water gem income, and a bunch of water mages.

Well, if he's stealing stuff, he isn't making Clams, now is he? That was rather the point of the exercise, wasn't it...?

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My point was that the clam horder would likely have a healthy water gem income, and a surplus of water mages to be able to cast the spell, while non-clam-hording nations are much less likely to have those conditions. (ie: Marignon wouldn't have an easy time using this fix.)

[ May 28, 2004, 04:29: Message edited by: LintMan ]

[LintMan]

Originally posted by Cohen:
You'll go to lose massed scouts ... point.
With fever fetish, you give it to scouts.
When scout has 1 hitpoint, remove it and give to a new scout.
2 x scout ...

This isn't very damage dealing ...

Well, it would add a bit of extra cost (10 gold + upkeep + occasional replacement scouts) to each clam plus the extra micromanagement annoyance. But the effect could be upped to, say "death unless MR save, disease otherwise".

But really, I still think the best solution would be to have some good high end water spells to make it worth saving up those water gems for. I'm thinking mainly of things like maybe a beneficial global effect spell (ie: along FotA or GoH lines), a non-ocean-based global effect spell (ie: doesn't just effect ocean or coastal provinces), some high-end amphib summons, some mid-range amphib summons that don't have gold upkeep cost (a huge downside to sea trolls!), a remote summon, and/or some powerful but pricey magic items.

Some quick ideas:

* "Harvest Rains" - increases supply in all provinces, according to dominion strength
* "Fountain of Youth" - increases pop growth in all provinces, according to dom strength. (Hmm. I really like this one!)
* "Weather Control" - caster specifies preferred heat/cold scale, and globally, all provinces are pushed towards it. (I'm thinking it'd be a weaker effect than Illwinter, but more flexible)
* "Ice Castle" - It magically never completely melts, but its defense is based on province heat/cold scale.
* "Sea Nymphs" - mid-high summon: amphib, awe +0, charm attack
* "Summon giant crocodile(s)" - low-mid range summon, amphib, maybe comparable strength to nature lion or kithaironic lion spells.
* "Summon Yeti" - mid or high-end thugish summon, possibly an SC-able chassis.
* "Call Nessie" - high-end amphib summon, maybe comparable toughness/cost to Tarrasque
* "Staff of Frost" - 40 water gem item, casts falling frost
* "Helm of Liquid Form" - 80 water gem item, reduces all physical damage taken by 75%
* "Staff of Speed" - 40-80 Water gem item, casts quickness on units up to say range 20, area 1-2

Just some ideas... I know I'd forge a lot less clams if I had stuff like this to use those water gems for.

[PvK]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:

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Originally posted by PvK:
All the clams in the game only generate a maximum number of astral pearls equal to the number of sea provinces on the map. If the world holds more clams than seas, then only certain random clams chosen each month, will get pearls, up to that number.

Nice. Except that in the pros and cons list, one of the things listed as an pro was that it was one of the few things Atlantis had going for it.

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Er, so? Any fix would also take massive hoarding away from Atlantis (and every one else), no? If Atlantis and/or water magic need another (less potent and fiddly) boon, I'm sure one can be invented. Several have already been proposed.

It made me think though. What if only a water-mage could use it? Dont we have oher items like that? (the only thing that come to mind at the moment is the stupid crown that only Ermor can use but I keep getting from indies)

I think that's a neat idea, in that it would add mage investment to the equation. Someone might want to re-do the numbers to see what effect it has on the abuse potential. However I'd say that if you are concerned about affecting nation balance whilst fixing clam abuse, that as others have pointed out, this just reduces the number of nations that can efficiently abuse it, without removing the abuse. What I like about my idea is it by definition guarantees there will not be an abusive amount of clam income, because there would be a limit.

Just increasing the gem cost might be sufficient, too. Adjust the math that was done - seems like there must be a balance point. 20 Water gems? 40? 20 Water + 10 or 20 Astral? I sort of think 20 Water would blunt the problem, but I'd want to see the resulting change in the numbers that were done before.

I would be happy to see another use or two for water gems, though I don't agree that there aren't good things to do with water gems - there are quite a few. The problem is that the clam hoard thing gets so powerful once the curve gets out of control.

PvK

[Esben Mose Hansen]

I like the idea of making clams unfavorable by introducing better waterspells. Heres my proposal:

The CURE. Cure all afflication on a single unit/leader.

The cost should be quite high, of course. I do realize that this makes the SC problem worse, if there is one, but that could be cured with:

Dry-freeze: Kill random unit, range 100, 100% success rate.

That would make an effective counter to the one-SC attack (since defenders go first; for defenders summons would be an effective countermeasure)

Man, would I like to be able to mod spell effects? :-)

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:

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Originally posted by PvK:
All the clams in the game only generate a maximum number of astral pearls equal to the number of sea provinces on the map. If the world holds more clams than seas, then only certain random clams chosen each month, will get pearls, up to that number.

Nice. Except that in the pros and cons list, one of the things listed as an pro was that it was one of the few things Atlantis had going for it.

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Clams on mages in the water should then have a better chance of their clams generating a pearl. Live wet clams are better than dry, dead, clams.

Maybe a 75/25 weighting. That way Atlantis still gets its benefit, while land nations have some reason for building clams, but not to the point of absurdity, since the clams would get to a point of diminishing returns.

Hmmm. Maybe if magic items could be deconstructed, recovering say, 10-50% of the gems that went in?

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by LintMan:
Some quick ideas:

* "Harvest Rains" - increases supply in all provinces, according to dominion strength
* "Fountain of Youth" - increases pop growth in all provinces, according to dom strength. (Hmm. I really like this one!)
* "Weather Control" - caster specifies preferred heat/cold scale, and globally, all provinces are pushed towards it. (I'm thinking it'd be a weaker effect than Illwinter, but more flexible)
* "Ice Castle" - It magically never completely melts, but its defense is based on province heat/cold scale.
* "Sea Nymphs" - mid-high summon: amphib, awe +0, charm attack
* "Summon giant crocodile(s)" - low-mid range summon, amphib, maybe comparable strength to nature lion or kithaironic lion spells.
* "Summon Yeti" - mid or high-end thugish summon, possibly an SC-able chassis.
* "Call Nessie" - high-end amphib summon, maybe comparable toughness/cost to Tarrasque
* "Staff of Frost" - 40 water gem item, casts falling frost
* "Helm of Liquid Form" - 80 water gem item, reduces all physical damage taken by 75%
* "Staff of Speed" - 40-80 Water gem item, casts quickness on units up to say range 20, area 1-2

Nice list. Keep thinking.

The weather control might also give a 10% protection against certain special events and spells (flood, tornado, rains)

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by PvK:
Just increasing the gem cost might be sufficient, too. Adjust the math that was done - seems like there must be a balance point. 20 Water gems? 40? 20 Water + 10 or 20 Astral? I sort of think 20 Water would blunt the problem, but I'd want to see the resulting change in the numbers that were done before.

20 Water makes Clams Atlantis-only, really. That means it requires a Water-3 Mage to Forge (or 2 with FotA). Not only does Atlantis have the only National Water-3 Mages, it also has a 1/8 chance of having Earth-2 Mages, which enable the Earth Boots/Dwarven Hammer progression.

10W10S, OTOH, hands the Clams to Rlyeh. Not just Rlyeh, but Arco and Pythium (Arco more than Pythium, though). Atlantis doesn't lose that much, thanks to the Deep Seers. Caelum loses out, unless they play with a Pretender made to make Clams. Tien Chi would use their Jade Emperor.

Another possible solution is to have the Clam automatically graft to the forger. This sort of makes use of Gandalf's idea, but takes it further. Clearly, if Clams are unremovable (and auto-attach to Forger), then the number of Clams a given player can have, max, is twice the number of Mages able to Forge the Clam (barring bizarre Misc. slots).

A weird effect of this is to make the Robe of the Sea more useful, as a Water-1 mage with it could Forge 2 Clams, as opposed to only the one if they had a Water Bracelet.

Of course, the most radical idea I have is to simply make the Pearls unremovable (you'd probably want to do this to all items/Pretenders that auto-produce Gems/Pearls). Those items would then change from an investment opportunity to more of a battlefield-enhancer. If this was done, I'd hope to see at least one gem-producing item per path (except probably blood slaves... though that would fix the Blood Sacrifice problem).

I note that this thread has completely derailed from its original intent. Ah well; I guess it happens. Does anyone think the item-destruction ideas are good?

Scott

[Tris]

Clams only work when equipped on mages?

Rationale: Magic flows more strongly around a mage, the clam uses this energy to create astral pearls.

Effect: Stops Scouts and other cheap things being able to hold clams. Makes upkeep for dedicated clam holders more expensive, while still keeping clams just as useful for mages to carry around to supply them with gems in the field.

Would help a bit? I think?