Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and more..

[Arryn]

Gandalf, while your point about 'frog's persistance may be true, he also raised a valid point when he said:

"Soul contracts invalidate huge swathes of blood summons. Most never get used becuase it is much much much more cost effective to create soul contracts."

Of course the same argument could be said about only summoning Bane Lords with your death gems, or Vine Ogres with nature gems (well, Fairy Queens are very nice too).

The real argument is whether a player is an optimizer (aka min-maxer), a strategist, or a RPer. Each camp vehemently expounds its views, and never will members from one camp sway those of another. Hence the perpetual bickering.

[deccan]

Soapyfrog said:
For EXAMPLE: Soul contracts invalidate huge swathes of blood summons. Most never get used becuase it is much much much more cost effective to create soul contracts.

I have to agree with that. I wish there were different Versions of soul contracts to make storm demons and demon knights. But there aren't. So I just make devils.

[Soapyfrog]

Arryn said:
Of course the same argument could be said about only summoning Bane Lords with your death gems, or Vine Ogres with nature gems (well, Fairy Queens are very nice too).

Yes its true there are optimal summons for all paths. however you do frequently summon other stuff too, and thats useful too... sometimes you will summon wraith lords, or demi-liches, or lamia queens. You will cast arouse hunger and ghost riders and call of the wild, etc etc. There are many useful things to put your nature and and death gems (well nature gems mostly go into fetishes if you are diligent, but still.)

The point is that while there are optimizations, they dont invalidate other strategies in the way that, say, soul contracts do. You cant compete with a soul contract in terms of regular units with any other blood summons. At least in the other arenas, the optimizations are not so blindingly obvious...

[Arryn]

Soapy, you've made your point, as Gandalf (and I) have tried to point out. Hammering away at it over and over again won't help further your cause, unless your intent is really that of trolling for someone to argue with.

Some people believe (fervently, or dare I say it, religiously) that SCs are too strong in the game, or that clams are unbalancing, or creature X is too cheap/expensive/strong/weak, or item Y is too cheap/expensive/strong/weak, or that feature Z is broken. And they are entitled to their opinions. But they are just that, opinions. Common courtesy (and common sense) asks that said pet opinions not be crammed down the throats of those who don't agree, since it's pointless and unpleasant.

[Gandalf Parker]

Arryn said:
The real argument is whether a player is an optimizer (aka min-maxer), a strategist, or a RPer. Each camp vehemently expounds its views, and never will members from one camp sway those of another. Hence the perpetual bickering.

There are also those who feel that each thing must be balanced by another thing. If they get a pawn then I should have a pawn. But the balance in this game is a level which is difficult to see. So many feel that so much is too powerful but as long as they cannot agree on what that thing is, then they balance each other out. Its difficult to see for someone who, for example, is a summoner who feels that they have found the unbeatable summons tactic. Or the armored-units person who feels that there is no balancing strength for his armored tactic. In a summoners game, or an armored game, they may be correct (even then I feel its alittle soon to have the ultimate one). But in a game where both play together they find their tactic is not such an automatic win.

[Arryn]

Gandalf Parker said:
But in a game where both play together they find their tactic is not such an automatic win.

And they become frustrated, which immediately leads them to whining on the forum. It's all so boringly, annoyingly repetitive. The gripe du jour.

[Boron]

Soapyfrog said:
The point is that while there are optimizations, they dont invalidate other strategies in the way that, say, soul contracts do. You cant compete with a soul contract in terms of regular units with any other blood summons. At least in the other arenas, the optimizations are not so blindingly obvious...

Well storm demons beat the devils . A SC beats them too etc. etc. .
So soul contract hoarding doesn't ensure you a win .

With clams etc. it is the same though not so severe :
If you only convert your water gems to clams then you don't lose too much but then it is a rather slow process .

If you convert back your gained astral pearls to speedup the clamhoarding process though then you lack them for some time and are vulnerable until you start to use them .
And there are too many factors to evaluate if your clamhoarding is good enough . If the other player intead gets 1 province more as you every 1-2 turns while you get 2-3 clams more the other player has still an advantage over you because he gets more gold , gems from sites , perhaps freespawns etc. .

I thought exactly like you do a few weeks before but i think now that hoarding is not a no-brainer .

[Soapyfrog]

Boron said:
Well storm demons beat the devils . A SC beats them too etc. etc..

I agree 1 on 1 a storm demon beats a devil. The problem is that I will have 300 devils and you will have 30 storm demons...

SC I agree you can with a LOT of effort make an SC who can tank an unlimited number of devils. However of course there are more devils where they came from (for free!!) AND of course I can use anti-SC tactics against your devil-tanking SC.

Since my devil army is endless replenishable, losing it is not a crippling blow. Your SC on the other hand, well, you will have to expend those considerable resources all over again, since the devil problem wont go away just ebcuase you killed a bunch of them.

You have to kill the source... and you cant becuase they are hidden on scouts...

[Kel]

Soapyfrog said:
However of course there are more devils where they came from (for free!!)

They aren't free. They just have a form of payment that rewards in the long term, rather than in the short term. Do you think it would be fair to pay 80 slaves for a single devil ? Of course not. To get many devils out of a soul contract, you consume many different kinds of resources and one which most people seem to ignore is the resource of Time.

Since my devil army is endless replenishable

Gem sites do not run out. Every army and summon is "endlessly replenishable". What you mean is that you have to reinvest gems. With contracts, though, you still have to reinvest Time. You don't think that's important ?

losing it is not a crippling blow. Your SC on the other hand, well, you will have to expend those considerable resources all over again, since the devil problem wont go away just ebcuase you killed a bunch of them.

That's true ! Of course, if I kill my opponents Bane Lord army, I doubt the problem will go away, either. Unless I actually start taking his resources away from him. Now, the obvious counter-point here is that the devils don't really take a lot of resources to rebuild, other than time (actually, even that has a caveat since we haven't talked about who is leading these devils). Even then, the answer is Time. If you can summon SCs faster than his contracts can produce devils (obviously not on a 1 for 1 basis), even in the short run, you should be able to take some of his resources away from him.

Now, I am not taking a stance on whether contracts are balanced or not. I am just beginning to explore them heavily, myself. I just wanted to point out that Time, as a resource, is something that all of the investment item discussions seem to overlook.

- Kel

[Boron]

Soapyfrog said:

I agree 1 on 1 a storm demon beats a devil. The problem is that I will have 300 devils and you will have 30 storm demons...

SC I agree you can with a LOT of effort make an SC who can tank an unlimited number of devils. However of course there are more devils where they came from (for free!!) AND of course I can use anti-SC tactics against your devil-tanking SC.

Since my devil army is endless replenishable, losing it is not a crippling blow. Your SC on the other hand, well, you will have to expend those considerable resources all over again, since the devil problem wont go away just ebcuase you killed a bunch of them.

You have to kill the source... and you cant becuase they are hidden on scouts...

Ok . But i can siege the province where the scouts are in .
And until very lategame you don't have so many soul contracts that you generate each turn 100 new devils , rather 20-50 new ones .
So killing 200-300 of your devils you need a few turns to have them again .
With staff of storm + a few air casters who cast e.g. thunderstrike + orb lightning the devils don't look too good .
And they have -50% cold resistence so ice strike and falling frost can do some damage too .


The devils are of course tough but fortunately you can ground them via storm and as a sideeffect the storm makes fire magic harder to use as well .



Most important though you have to remember the high costs of soul contracts .
80 slaves , 60 with dwarfen hammer .
A dwarfen hammer costs though 20 earthgems and the blood nations are not the best sitesearchers . Abysia and Mictlan both lack earthmagic , Mictlan lacks it total and Abysia can only get E on warlocks , then you can forge a bloodstone and earth boots for earth 3 but that takes some time .
If you don't take blood 5 on your pretender then you will need construction 6 in order to get 2 boosters to blood 5 to forge the soul contracts .
And you will use a lot of your initial blood first on the ice/arch devils normally .

So by turn 30 you have i think if you don't go only on soul contracts about 10 and produce each turn 1-2 new .
By turn 50 you have then like 20-50 soul contracts but on turn 50 the others will have other good things .
Only when you reach 100+ soul contracts at turn 70-100 they start to really get out of control .

Soul contracts are good but unless you manage to get FoTa running or find a constructionbonus site they are not really overpowered .
With forces of darkness you get 14 Fiends for 50 blood that's not bad too . A fiend of darkness has about the same combat power like a Devil .
So only after 15 turns the soul contract starts to get a higher output .
But 15 turns is a long time so the player who uses the lvl 9 blood spell instead will have more forces earlier than you .
If you can survive this then it is fine but chances are not bad that the nonhorder overwhelms you before your hoarding really pays off .