Perpetuality - 62 Player MegaGame (Finished!)

[Micah]

Is there any chance of taking out the gem-producer items? The end game of this thing is going to be flat-out retarded if they're left in. I can reasonably see someone having in excess of 1000 clams by the end of the game, and that's just not fun. The thought of a half-ton of fever fetishes makes me weep. If they're taken out the game will actually be about taking territory and finding magic sites, not who can clam-whore the best.

[Foodstamp]

I thought I read somewhere that there was a limit to how many gem producing items you could have now?

[Micah]

I had about 80 or so clams in Undertow without running into any problems (and that was with 3.06)

[Velusion]

FS - I didn't think there was an artificial limit.

I don't know about removing them... but I'd be up for say... doubling the cost via a mod if the general consensus in this thread is that they are too powerful in this sized game.

[K]

As this is a grand experiment, I'm tempted to "let the chips fall where they may" and not disallow anything.

I mean, if a dude casts the Arcane Nexus, they are asking for every remaining nation to send every assassination spell they can cast at that dude's provinces in order to kill the guy that cast the global (thus dropping it). You may have the gems for that turn, but what are you going to do with them when you have no commanders in your entire empire?

Natural selection and a glut of savvy players will curb even the most potentially abusive thing you can think of, and at the end of the day the ability to make a clam every turn is every bit one of Oceania's special powers as Abysia's ability to make a blood hunter every turn.

That being the case, I'd like to argue for no mods other than the ones to make the game possible. Let's not nerf nations because of what might happen before we even figure out what this play environment does to the game. Speculations are nice and everything, but lets actually get some testing in before we radically alter how the game plays.

[Micah]

You can't very well counter the "abusive tactic" of clamming because no one can tell it's happening. It doesn't show up in the score graphs (unlike Nexus).

I'm not concerned with Oceania making a clam every turn so much as everyone making 10 of the damn things every turn. It will introduce disgusting amounts of power creep into the late-game, and will also likely be a mandatory strategy that every nation has to follow if they're trying to win. Mandatory strategy + power creep + micromanagement = bad. Wish should not be something that you can cast 5 times/turn.

[Evilhomer]

Blood hunting doesn't show up in the graphs either. I'm doing 500 blood slaves at turn 40 in one game now. This game will obviously go 100+ turns and a successful blood nation can easily do 2000-3000 slaves per turn at that point (probably more). So if you want to ban/nerf clams you probalby should ban/nerf blood nations aswell for the same reason.

[Micah]

Blood magic has an ongoing cost in mage time and lost income, and scales with the number of provinces you own, along with gold and gem income. You still give up something for those slaves (3000 slaves in a turn drains an entire capital province's worth of population from your empire every month, on top of the mage time and unrest costs). Blood is really damn good, but it's not really put at an abnormal advantage just because of a large map or a long game (I think it's slightly disadvantaged by a long game because of the population drain, actually). If you want to debate that Blood is unbalanced in general that's a different point.

Clams do not have an ongoing cost aside from needing warm bodies, and scale with game LENGTH. A clam you make on turn 10 will have pumped out 90 pearls by turn 100. I can't think of many other amazingly good uses for water gems, either, so it's not like you give up an opportunity for kickass summons or item forging when you invest in a clam instead (the water queens are amazing, but since there are only 3 of them between 60 nations they're not going to make much of a dent on overall gem consumption)

[Evilhomer]

Blood is not at all disadvantaged by a long game. Not at all. Yes you may lose some pop and get a bit of unrest (less income) but with 3000 slaves/turn your a monster. And a blood hunter is a 1 time investment just like a clam (mage ca 150 gp +1 sang dousing rod (5 slaves)). And just like a clam it will pay of the more turns it is allowed to hunt. And if you nerf/remove clams you will have to do the same to blood stones and fever fetishes, and you will end up hurting some nations alot because of this.

(do note that my argument is not to nerf blood, simply do not nerf anything).

[FAJ]

I dont think blood hunting and clamming are so comparable. An enemy can see and stop blood hunting with attacks and remote spells. You need to protect each blood hunting province from remote attack. The amount of effort to make blood hunting unbalanced can be matched by others to thwart it, but using clams isn't exactly hard, or easy to stop. That, and I would rather have a player have 1000 slaves than 1000 pearls.

Fever fetishes require a lot of micromanagment, and massive amounts of fire gems arn't quite as devestating as pearls, or even slaves.

I am for the limiting of clams. (Or, if someone could make a mod that makes them work like fever fetishs, but produce pearls instead )