Info: Blood stones and MR

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

(Calahan: people are less likely to read what you say when you insult them at the same time)

But my posts are never meant to be read, as they are meant to be framed and worshipped for posterity

Originally Posted by llamabeast

You're right about the 16 turn payback time or whatever (off the top of my head I think it's 14 but never mind).

Clams are 7 turns due to the Wish mechanics, where 1 pearl = 2 gems. Hence Clams being exactly twice as good as other gem gens.

People thinking it's 14 turns is what starts making them think gem gens are less powerful than they really are. (and if someone doesn't understand the Wish mechanics then once again their opinion on gem gens is instantly rendered meaningless)

[TigerBlood]

Originally Posted by Calahan

1 - There is no real limit on how many gem gens you can create. (ok, 50 per turn, but that is not a good limit)

Theoretical limit. In a vaccum there is nothing wrong with this statement. In the context of an actual game, there are actual limitations imposed by any number of variables. Given ideal circumstances, 50 free mages all comfortably established, a steady gem income, sure you can fill your lab up every turn.

Practically, at what stage does this occur in a vanilla game? Turn 150, 200? The only reasonable explanation for a game dragging on that long would be multiple players all sitting in the corner turtling.

2 - There is no barrier to entry on where you can build them.

In a lab. In provinces you control. Otherwise true.

3 - There is practically no barrier to entry to creating gem gens.

No barriers aside from paths, gem income and the oppotunity cost associated with devoting a commander to the task when they could be doing something else.

Just because these obstacles are surmountable in ideal circumstances does not make them nonexistant or insignificant.

4 - Return on investment is way too quick, and initial investment required is too small

Return on the investment...

You're not just pumping gems into the ether. You have to have a mage craft the item. They do that at the exclusion of another task. Suppose they need a ring to get up to W3, you're adding that cost to the initial investment. A hammer requires more gems. A Naiad, Nushi or whatever requires yet more gems. A Naiad creating a clam with a hammer is going to require a lot of time to see a return on the initial outlay, even cranking out a clam per turn. 50 Naiads with hammers is not a small investment. 50 recruitable W3N1 mages is not a small investment.

This is an argument against all the current pricing of gem increasing effects (especially globals, that all have a stupidly quick ROI), but with gem gens Fetishes pay for themselves in around 9 turns (or 6 if you pre-disease the carriers). Stones in around 9 (using 5.5:1 slave:gem ratio), and Clams in a crazy 7. That is all way too quick. And because the initial price is so low, it's almost never a bad idea to forge them at any point in the game. ie. If you had to pay an upfront cost of 110W+30N to get back 70 pearls in 7 turns time, then it's harder to come up with the initial cost, and you do have to think if the upfront fee can be spent better elsewhere. But if it's just an upfront fee of 11W+3N, then you don't even have to think about it. As an analogy....

See above. It takes an incredibly long time before you start seeing a returns on your initial outlay sufficient to perpetuate further investment indefinately. Assuming you're up against an opponent or opponents with a similar base gem income, one that is using the majority of those gems for more immediate purposes, who do you think is going to have the advantage? To be clear, I'm talking about turn 30, not turn 260+. It takes some fairly unique circumstances or active collusion to bring about the scenario you are alluding to.

Some problems on gameplay

5 - The defender advantage synergies too well with high Astral.

Yeah. In the land of the Turtle Gods, Astral is King. If you're going to leave another nation to their own devices for 100 turns, you deserve to lose. I'll also add that your Astral Misery Scenario can occur in a game without gem gens. Big nations unwilling to overcommit against a foe in case they overextend themselves or get ganged up on. Not as epic though, and likely to get stale a hell of a lot faster

6 - The income is hidden

Oh noes. Ban Blood. Hidden Income is Bad!

7 - They make conquering lands an irrelevance

You're talking about a paradigm shift in warfare after multiple players have set up perpetual gem generation forges. Territories are still important.

8 - They are Micromanagement hell

I disagree. Then again, my preferences lean toward blood nations. Putting hours into a late game turn is not an issue for me assuming the game is hosted at a reasonable schedule (3-4 days) once the game moves toward the late and end game.

It only becomes a chore if the game has been allowed get to that stage and I'm clearly going to lose via eventual attrition. I usually have the sense to concede well before that point, assuming other victory conditions have not been put in play.

9 - Games get stupid.

Once you've seen someone running around with dozens of S5 empowered Wraith Lords, and MLichs with 200+ HPs, then you know for certain that gem gens are just a joke, and allow players to stop even trying to play well, by giving them free reign to start doing stupid things. (which is not a good gameplay feature)

Unless I was the guy running around with a dozen empowered wraith lords, I probably would have conceded the game by that point.

....go and organise a load of large scale games with Gem Gens with various other disbelievers. Play these type of games constantly until you get to the point where you are all highly skilled players. Then organise another bunch of large scale games with these skilled players, where most game are lasting over 100+ turns with multiple players having hundreds of Clams each. Then continue playing these games even though a single turn in any game is taking many hours to complete. As then and only then can you come back in 4-5 years time and give your opinion about Gem Gens based on actual experience from high level games. As if you do that then you will have recreated the MP history of Dominions 3 that has taken place on these forums, and maybe then you will understand why those who have been through all of that, or even just a part of it, have firmly concluded that Gem Gens ruin the game completely.

Yeah yeah. I'll go dust off my brothers well used copy of PPP. You can go back to measuring your post count with whatever account you favour the most and pretend it means something.

A few final points...

...tl;dr - Just listen to players who have experienced it, and accept it when they say that Gem Gen items ruin the game.

I disagree.

[Executor]

LOL!
Dude, you have no fricking idea do you?

Yes Calahan, you are obviously a bias wanker. How dare you and the rest of the vets, who have played dozens of games under scores and hundereds of clams and wishes and armagedons and went 100+ into the game just to give up, think you know better than TigerBlood who's never actually played a game with gemgens?!
I mean really...

BTW around turn 60 I'd say. The forging of 50 clams I mean.

[TigerBlood]

Originally Posted by Calahan

People thinking it's 14 turns is what starts making them think gem gens are less powerful than they really are. (and if someone doesn't understand the Wish mechanics then once again their opinion on gem gens is instantly rendered meaningless)

In the lands of the Turtle Gods, games don't officially start until everyone has Alt 9 researched and an S9 caster.

Lets be clear. 20 gems spent on turn 1. turn 2, you get 1 gem. Turn 21 you recoup your costs. Turn 22+ you make a profit.

Cost reduction items, boosters and specialised summons modify these cost accordingly. They do not modify them downward unless you are using the same cost recuction item exclusively for a significant amount of time.

Originally Posted by Executor

BTW around turn 60 I'd say. The forging of 50 clams I mean.

Sure thing. You can probably do better if you really applied yourself. All the players sit in the corner and have a race to see who can get to 50 clams first. Send me pictures.

[Executor]

In the lands of the Turtle Gods everyone rushes The Forge and get's a 5-6? gem clam.
In a normal game whoever gets The Steel Ovens wins.

[llamabeast]

You're being really weird TigerBlood. Do you just think everyone is lying as part of some bizarre conspiracy?

[LDiCesare]

Originally Posted by TigerBlood

Practically, at what stage does this occur in a vanilla game? Turn 150, 200? The only reasonable explanation for a game dragging on that long would be multiple players all sitting in the corner turtling.

No. In the turn 266 game mentioned above, the only player that'd been turtling has been killed swiftly (well...) for turtling.
The game drags mostly due to one player (me)'s inability to take out opponent's forts while another one manages it but still. It also drags because bringing dozens of gate cleavers on a capital and hundreds of troops doesn't harm walls a bit, but the besieged player doesn't stay idle. The thing is that raiding provinces with 200 pop doesn't do much damage to anyone.

Originally Posted by TigerBlood

In a lab. In provinces you control. Otherwise true.

No. In a lab you control. If the province is besieged and thus controlled by someone else, you can use it too.

Originally Posted by TigerBlood

No barriers aside from paths, gem income and the oppotunity cost associated with devoting a commander to the task when they could be doing something else.

These are in fact insignificant as every survivor in long games managed to build lots of clams, blood stones and whatnot.

Originally Posted by TigerBlood

50 Naiads with hammers is not a small investment. 50 recruitable W3N1 mages is not a small investment.

You don't need 50. Plus after 100 turns, you've paid off whatever initial investment you made, without even considering Wish.

Originally Posted by TigerBlood

turn 30+

Games rarely end at this stage. They often last to turn 50 or 80. At this point, a RoI of 7 turns (Wish) is definitely worth the cost.

Originally Posted by TigerBlood

Yeah. In the land of the Turtle Gods, Astral is King. If you're going to leave another nation to their own devices for 100 turns, you deserve to lose.

When a player is being defeated and retreats in his last fort, he has little choice but to turtle. If you don't pick winning conditions like majority of provinces or something clever, it happens. Dominions IS the land of turtle gods. Even when you don't let other players to their own, they can still manage to get huge defender advantage.

Originally Posted by TigerBlood

Oh noes. Ban Blood. Hidden Income is Bad!

This does not compare. Blood requires hunters, provinces and population. All of these are easily spotted and it's easy to guess what kind of blood economy a player has by counting his number of provinces for instance. You can't do that with BS or clams.

Originally Posted by TigerBlood

You're talking about a paradigm shift in warfare after multiple players have set up perpetual gem generation forges. Territories are still important.

No, they are irrelevant at this point in the game.

When people reach the end-game after fighting several wars, defeating several opponents, they sometimes have researched all the way to 9 in every path and have had enough gems and spare wizards to start a clam economy in order to defeat some of the four or five remaining players who also fought some wars. It's not for people who turtled from the start. It's for everyone that clam-hoarding is a reality and a necessity in order to compete.
Seriously, when you have researched 9 in every school, you usually have enough boosters to spare a pair on someone who can build gem-gens without even planning it or turtling for it.

[Bwaha]

Originally Posted by Calahan

Well you're hanging with a stupid crowd then.

Ahem.


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[elmokki]

I for one would also like to note how gem generators are a retarded mechanic that deserved to be removed. The hammers I'm not as sure about, but I do agree that they were important enough for about any nation design to consider a way to get them so they obscured strategies other.

But about gemgens. Along with the absolutely horrible micromanagement the biggest issue for me is that the gemgen income was next to impossible to stop. Blood income can be stopped with (good enough) raiding or advancing armies as can site based gem income. Globals can also be dispelled or replaced. Gold income stops as provicnes are lost or unrest is high enough. Gem generators you can have on a horde of scouts hiding somewhere and in general very safe from any threat.

If gemgens were fairly fragile and easily spottable and not very mobile things you had to spread around your lands (like let's say they'd each improve output of a magical site with diminishing mariginal returns or some non-gem income related reason) they would be fine. Blood hunting is fine since it requires peaceful provinces, continuous mage turns and bringing your mages in the open to risk death or building forts everywhere. As a bonus even if the forts are everywhere they are stopped from getting slaves by sieging the forts. Gemgens in vanilla are not even nearly comparable to blood hunting in vanilla due to this.

I do also prefer gameplay that doesn't reward turtling as much as gemgens did. I mean, even after the removal some nations and strategies are still fine with rather passive playing.

I suppose everyone is entitled to an opinion on the gemgens, but I personally find them as implemented in Dominions 3 a horrible mechanic that deserved to be removed (or well, items made unique). I cannot understand anyone who thinks they are an universally good thing for the game (multiplayer anyway) and I have yet to see an argument for the gemgens that doesn't make the writer seem dumb in my eyes.

[Bwaha]

I use them on battlefield mages, its just such a convenience not to have to shift gems around as much.