Are devils worth 7 blood each?

[Soapyfrog]

Actually my suggestion doesnt work sicne you'd just alchemize the nature gems from your astral/fire production. Doh!

Well I dont know. For sure forcing Mages to use them would be a huge step in the right direction.

[Soapyfrog]

Cainehill said:
You go ahead and invest as much as you can in clams while in wars on small maps; as you say, if you survive you'll be in good position, but I expect your opponents will be eating your lunch.

Because I spent some water gems on clams? I really doubt that would lose me the game.

I have lost games becuase I spent those gems on things OTHER than clamming though. So I know that happens

[johan osterman]

Soapyfrog said:

Well I do not object to exponential economic growth, of course, if you take Moo2 or Civ as examples these games integrate such growth very well into the game itself: You MUST grow to survive and economic growth is ubiquitous. Further, the games scale very well... you dont start producing the best unit in the game on turn 60, thats for sure.

You seem to labour under the absurd notion that 1 turn in one game is directly translates to 1 turn in another. By turn 60 in MOO2 you would have researched less than half a dozen technologies and would just be getting started with the game, in dom2 you could very well have, for all intents and purposes, won a midsize game by turn 60.

Secondly growth in these games is tied to and constrained to various factors such as population, resources, geographical areas, whichs caps your maximum growth, and as the game continues you will constantly find youself resource constrained, so if you want to REALLY grow exponentially, you must physically expand and thus conflict with your neighbours.

In Dominions2 you have this exponential growth strategy in clamming etc. as well. However it is not tied to expansion, it is self-sustaining (i.e. you will never really be resource constrained once your clamming etc oeprations get going)... so you do NOT need to attack your neighbours, in fact you shouldn't since its counter-productive. That's not a very good game mechanic IMHO.

....

If you do not expand and use your resources in other ways than trying to get clams and hoard them you will get stomped, even if you play just 2 players on a enormous map. If you are to acquire any significant number clams you will have to expand etc in order to get the reources you need to produce the clams and the money to get the mages you need in order to use them.

[Soapyfrog]

johan osterman said:
If you do not expand and use your resources in other ways than trying to get clams and hoard them you will get stomped, even if you play just 2 players on a enormous map. If you are to acquire any significant number clams you will have to expand etc in order to get the reources you need to produce the clams and the money to get the mages you need in order to use them.

You will use resources in other ways, and you will expand in the early game, clean up the indeps around, maybe shoot a cripple or two if its convenient, but once your clamhoarding operations get under way, the actual NEED to expand to continue your growth will disappear.

[Arryn]

Huzurdaddi said:
Unless someone is playing Atlantis or is astonishingly competent clams don't really come into the picture until turn 60 or so.

I guess I must be "astonishingly" competent because, in my Caelum SP game (Orania, 15 nations) at turn 42 my astral site income is 1/turn and 21/turn from clams. I'd say that a 21:1 clam income ratio is by most anyone's definition "in the picture". The clams (and astral gems) do not change my strategy at all (I could live without any whatsoever), but they are sure handy to have for alchemy, which speeds some of my summonings or forgings by several turns. Oh, and I haven't been diligent in site searching, either. I'd have more clams (from more water gem income) had I been deliberately seeking to maximize my output of clams. As it is, I've just been using the water income I've come across through conquest.

[Boron]

Soapyfrog said:

You will use resources in other ways, and you will expand in the early game, clean up the indeps around, maybe shoot a cripple or two if its convenient, but once your clamhoarding operations get under way, the actual NEED to expand to continue your growth will disappear.

Expansion is always not bad . Gives you more income .
On 50% magic site frequency ,the most common setting in mp games i guess in average a fully searched province nets you about 3-5 gems , you get gold and you find perhaps even very special sites like special mages / boni for summoning . And not to forget you can perhaps bloodhunt the new province .

Those investment strategies are good but only if you are in a relative good position like 3rd or 4th . If your enemy has 10 provinces more which are searched this is like if he has +30-50 clams , perhaps more if you include blood etc. in the calculation .


But clamhoarding is of course very powerful . A problem is that those nations who can sitesearch bad and are bad hoarders of one of the good hoard items like marignon/man etc. are disadvantaged after earlygame .

If you see clamhoarding from another side it is perhaps more a bless then a curse because it is a possibility to do inner growth .
In master of orion 2 the bigger nation had normally always an advantage because 20% more planets meant 20% more supplies/income/researchpower .
In civilization it is better handled because of the corruption mechanism and the map is rather small .

[Thufir]

Soapyfrog said:

Well I do not object to exponential economic growth, of course, if you take Moo2 or Civ as examples these games integrate such growth very well into the game itself: You MUST grow to survive and economic growth is ubiquitous. Further, the games scale very well... you dont start producing the best unit in the game on turn 60, thats for sure.

Secondly growth in these games is tied to and constrained to various factors such as population, resources, geographical areas, whichs caps your maximum growth, and as the game continues you will constantly find youself resource constrained, so if you want to REALLY grow exponentially, you must physically expand and thus conflict with your neighbours.

In Dominions2 you have this exponential growth strategy in clamming etc. as well. However it is not tied to expansion, it is self-sustaining (i.e. you will never really be resource constrained once your clamming etc oeprations get going)... so you do NOT need to attack your neighbours, in fact you shouldn't since its counter-productive. That's not a very good game mechanic IMHO.

The clam/fetish/stone hoarding strategy needs to have a continual external cost to constrain that growth. My "conVersion instead of creation" suggestion would accomplish this, i.e. a fever fetish would let you produce 2 fire gems a turn, but you need 1 nature gem to feed it. At some point you will need more nature gems, and have to look beyond your borders to get them.

In the end it is not the exponential growth specifically whcih is bad, it is the self-sustaining nature of that growth which is highly unnatural for most games.

I hope the suggestions this thread have generated have been constructive. I would love to see some of them implemented. Hopefully with item/unit modding some of it can even be done without the need for an official patch...

You misquote me. In the sentence right after you chop my quote I said:

Perhaps the real objection is to unconstrained exponential growth (maybe soapyfrog is already saying this, and I've misread).

So, we are in agreement, at least at a theoretical level. The problem is that in practice, building in constraints in growth needs to be done at design time. It's not just clams (or even clams +ff's +soul contracts +summoners +...) it's really the way the whole magic system works. In a real sense, anything that has an ongoing effect, without an ongoing cost constitutes a "free lunch" or a perpetual motion machine, of a kind.

And the fact is, that the game as it stands is not broken, so I'm pretty happy with the current state of affairs, myself. I like some of the changes that you list, namely that clams could only be used by mages (as Cohen had earlier suggested), and soul contracts could only be used by Blood Mages.

However, undoing the unconstrained growth of clams and other items will unbalance the game, as it stands. For example, Tien Chi S&A (one of my favorite themes, but already weak to begin with) is truly hosed. So, I would guess are Atlantis and R'lyeh.

[Huzurdaddi]

guess I must be "astonishingly" competent because, in my Caelum SP game (Orania, 15 nations) at turn 42 my astral site income is 1/turn and 21/turn from clams

Right and 21 per turn does not have the same kind of impact that the frog is talking about. He's talking about the 50-100 astral per turn income which feeds wishing. 21 / turn is nice and you are on the way. In maybe in 10 or 15 turns you will be GTG.

[Pickles]

I think I agree with everyone here!
Late game your gem income can be far higher if you spam gem items than if not but you have to survive. Diplomacy can sometimes replace armies for this MP. These strategies give exponential growth while any other growth in the game is not exponential. In general late game admin means I am not interested in playing game with more than about 10 provinces each or 120 ish in total. PLus I prefer the early wars & using the whole of the tech tree. So while I do think the game is a bit flawed in way I think it is soluble without any code changes by choosing maps that suit me. Admittedly if I liked teching all the way before I attacked anyone I might have issues.

So to slightly drag this in another direction has anyone considered ULM spamming. I played one MP game and was able to get a Forge of the Ancients. This with a smith (or hammer) reduces the cost of a fever fetish to one fire & one nature gem & allows any mage to make them. It reduces clams to 3S if you can get a water (1) mage.
This is a 2 turn payback or worst case - alchemising fire into nature - 5 turn.

Now that is insane growth - too much to be bothered with for me after only 30 ish but it does not take long for that to be a ludicrous number of fetishes or clams. The fire gems can be alchemised to pay for scouts to carry them.

Around turn 30 when the forge is likely to be researched Ulm will have at least 30 smiths so even one turns use of the forge would allow 30 fetishes - adding 90 earth gems to the cost makes them 5 gems each. Or if you get 2 turns use 3.5 gems each. I think the forge saved me its cost almost every turn I had it up, it is grotesque but especially for spamming.

I also got contracts for 20 slaves (from an empowered smith) which makes the ROI very good, (& I did lose at least one to a horror attack). You can make this 10 for one smith if you use the unique hammer but it may need a second empowering.

Anyway there you have a truly horrible exponential micro hell of forging

Hmm lost the plot now

dum dum

Pickles

[Arryn]

Huzurdaddi said:
Right and 21 per turn does not have the same kind of impact that the frog is talking about. He's talking about the 50-100 astral per turn income which feeds wishing.

By the time I can have a 50-100 astral/turn income (turn 60-80) I've already effectively won the game (ie: I cannot be stopped), even on a map the size of Orania, and the whole issue of clamhoarding for wishing is thus moot. All wishing does is hasten what will happen anyway. For me that is; YMMV.

The boys at IW have more or less said the same thing re: clams. If you're aggressively expanding and building units, you'll be overrunning the map long before a massive clam-bake will matter. Clam-hoarding only matters if you have a laid-back play style. IMO (which I have said before, as have others), the whole issue of clams is way overblown. Also IMO, those who appear to have the most trouble coping with other's usage of clams have fundamental play style issues and they'll get crushed by opponents regardless, even if clams didn't exist at all. The clams are just adding insult to injury.