Tip: Template for reducing late game MM hell

[Calahan]

Catching up on the thread. I must say I really like the sound of getting rid of Dwarven Hammers (by making them unique). As besides the MM relief involved, it could result in a lot of new strategies evolving for several nations if they no longer had to concern themselves during the build phase with how they are going to aquire Dwarven Hammers during the game.

[Squirrelloid]

Re: Banning Dwarven Hammers
This has a profound effect on strategy because it can severely limit how quickly a nation can diversify its items (by gem type), and thus makes it much harder to start forging useful items in magic paths you don't have easy access to site-searching spells for.

Yes, the hammer earns its gem cost back quickly. But if that isn't in earth gems then its not just an accelerator - its also a diversifier. I mean, forging RoW for full price is fine and dandy if you have astral mages standard, but if you don't getting to cut the cost down makes it much easier to get to the good magic items in that path. Effectively, lack of a hammer makes diversifying your magical paths on your pretender less viable, because you'll have a much harder time generating the gem income for him to do anything with it.

Removing hammers would also unfairly benefit some nations, because they have easy access to the paths which have the critical expensive items. Rlyeh with good Death and Astral strikes me as being high on the list of nations who benefit relative to others.

(Making hammer unique would be far worse - its good, but at least everyone can use it).

On why some nations need compensation if gem generators are removed:
Since someone asked...
The reason why some nations need some tweaking is that they rely on gem generators to be effective in the late game. Bandar Log, for example, needs to clam like mad to afford its national summons. Substantially reducing their cost would certainly help.

Some other nations, like MA Oceania, have nothing else going for them in the late game except they are prime candidates for forging boatloads of gem generators. I'm playing MA Oceania in Water Total War right now, and while i've taken steps to help me have a real endgame, let me tell you the lack of clams is severely hampering me. (In particular, EA Rlyeh totally outclasses me in combat magic, and while there are some things I could certainly have done to have improved that last attempt at storming his fortress, it would have been a difference of number of units killed. I need something to answer his astral battle magic, and water/nature doesn't really have it - summons are the only real way for me to diversify my casting base.)

Re: Diplomacy leads to ganging up on weaker players
Only if the players in your game allow that to happen. Two things need to happen to stop this. (1) Binding agreements are stupid, except for agreements of trade (and even then, not necessary). It leads to situations where a player in a poor position can't bargain his way out because his opponents are locked into NAPs or similar. (2) Weaker players need to sell their survival as an advantage against a more powerful rival, or at least that the threat of the rival is great enough that he needs to be taken down a peg now rather than later. (Being able to break NAPs without warning makes this more possible, because chances are the weak player is trying to turn one assailant on another one, and they likely have an NAP agreement).

[P3D]

In the game Bloodless, I limited MM by
- eliminating blood magic altogether (well, spells items and sites)
That of course reduces the number of playable nations, and we are playing in MA
- removed gem gens, some bonus sites, some rituals (AC, AN, UD, Forge) and Tartarians
- limited the number of players (starting with 6) therefore the number of provinces.
We increased magic site freq though.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=43298

[P3D]

If you want to decrease forging for thug/SC equipment, decrease the need a bit. Equip more of the summons/recruits with some basic equipment (ench sword, shield, armor and helmet) so one would not need to spend 40 clicks to equip them (like 7-8 clicks per item).

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by P3D

If you want to decrease forging for thug/SC equipment, decrease the need a bit. Equip more of the summons/recruits with some basic equipment (ench sword, shield, armor and helmet) so one would not need to spend 40 clicks to equip them (like 7-8 clicks per item).

Nice idea, but I don't think the game engine would count this as magic weapons/armor so someone would hit you with Armor of Achilles and you'd no longer have any armor.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Valerius

Nice idea, but I don't think the game engine would count this as magic weapons/armor so someone would hit you with Armor of Achilles and you'd no longer have any armor.

This is true. Armor of Achilles/Destruction/Iron Bane/etc. destroy all inherent armor, leaving only armor which comes from forged equipment.

-Max

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

On why some nations need compensation if gem generators are removed:
Since someone asked...
The reason why some nations need some tweaking is that they rely on gem generators to be effective in the late game. Bandar Log, for example, needs to clam like mad to afford its national summons. Substantially reducing their cost would certainly help.

Some other nations, like MA Oceania, have nothing else going for them in the late game except they are prime candidates for forging boatloads of gem generators. I'm playing MA Oceania in Water Total War right now, and while i've taken steps to help me have a real endgame, let me tell you the lack of clams is severely hampering me. (In particular, EA Rlyeh totally outclasses me in combat magic, and while there are some things I could certainly have done to have improved that last attempt at storming his fortress, it would have been a difference of number of units killed. I need something to answer his astral battle magic, and water/nature doesn't really have it - summons are the only real way for me to diversify my casting base.)

Yes, without clams it's much harder for Bandar to afford its national summons. But it's harder for every other nation without recruitable SCs (or the Chalice/GoH) as well. And in any case, isn't a Bandar without gem gens still in a better position than Man, who has no national summons at all? My point was that we shouldn't be concerned with just compensating clamming nations for the loss of gem gens as with trying to give each nation some kind of end game. No, they don't all have to be equal but there should be some kind of SC summon available to everyone.

So I'm not against adjusting the cost of national summons. If the cost of Bandar's summons is inflated on the assumption that the player will clam then that's an argument for reducing them. But I would just like to offer something to the nations that don't even have national summons. And, honestly, some of the nations that are mentioned as needing compensation if gem gens are removed (for example, MA Abysia) just don't make sense to me.

But I think this is getting off topic so let me throw out a more on topic idea. A not insignificant part of micromanagement is moving gems around. I know you can't eliminate the game mechanic of using gems to boost effective level and in some cases you'll want to have a spell use gems (i.e. touch of madness), but what about eliminating gem requirements for almost all combat spells? It seems like not having to drag around scouts and restock every mage's gems each turn could make combat planning less tedious.

I think CBM may have already taken some steps towards this (the elemental protection spells perhaps?).

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Valerius

No, they don't all have to be equal but there should be some kind of SC summon available to everyone.

Why? In an ideal world, you merely want some type of endgame strategy potentially available to anyone, but it doesn't have to be SCs. In my limited experience, SCs tend to dominate the endgame mostly because they're more mobile than armies or summons (slap on a pair of boots and/or cast Teleport) and because they're good at taking out PD and unsupported armies--but serious battles always come down to the mages anyway. National summons along the lines of Iron Dragons/Ophanim/storm demons would be an acceptable substitute for SC access in my opinion, provided you had enough possibilities to make it nontrivial to counter (i.e. preserve flexibility). Either you send them out raiding or you use them as blockers while your mages rain down evocations--the same as you would do with SCs.

-Max

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

Why? In an ideal world, you merely want some type of endgame strategy potentially available to anyone, but it doesn't have to be SCs. In my limited experience, SCs tend to dominate the endgame mostly because they're more mobile than armies or summons (slap on a pair of boots and/or cast Teleport) and because they're good at taking out PD and unsupported armies--but serious battles always come down to the mages anyway. National summons along the lines of Iron Dragons/Ophanim/storm demons would be an acceptable substitute for SC access in my opinion, provided you had enough possibilities to make it nontrivial to counter (i.e. preserve flexibility). Either you send them out raiding or you use them as blockers while your mages rain down evocations--the same as you would do with SCs.

-Max

SCs have one more important attribute: they're tough. In my experience you don't see many human mages out in the field during the late game. They're simply too fragile. If you run into a couple of castings of rain of stones or earthquake before you can buff there go your mages.

Demons make good late game troops because they've got the HP to take a hit and good enough MR that being hit with master enslave before you buff won't result in losing your army. But your opponent will have those, or a comparable unit, in addition to his SCs so it seems to me you'll come up short if you don't have SCs of your own.

[Kuritza]

Originally Posted by Valerius

Yes, without clams it's much harder for Bandar to afford its national summons. But it's harder for every other nation without recruitable SCs (or the Chalice/GoH) as well. And in any case, isn't a Bandar without gem gens still in a better position than Man, who has no national summons at all?

Man still has combat evocations and decent troops (esp. with CBM, which makes it possible to mass cavalry). Also, Kinnaras are so frail that even as Bandar Log I often end up using Golems instead of them, so having Kinnaras is not much of an advantage. (Kinnaras can be effective raiders with less equipment, though)
Only Rudras and Devatas are really unique, and these are high in the research tree and expensive.
Perhaps Bandar Log are better than Man in the endgame even without the gem generators, but how about comparing them to some *good* nation?

Anyway, I hope that 'no gem generators' mod wont become an integrated part of CBM. After all, Oceania and Bandar Log (aka clammer nations) do not dominate all MA games, do they?