The next patch [Archive] - .com.unity Forums

NTJedi

March 21st, 2004, 09:33 PM

Any rumors on when it will be released ?
(?sometime this summer... or... ?sometime late this year?)

Any new events, beings, magic sites ?

Ragnarok-X

March 21st, 2004, 10:44 PM

i dont want to know details about the patch, just an ESTIMATED release date would be good. 1 month, 2 month ? more, less ?

Zeikko

March 21st, 2004, 10:54 PM

I hope the next patch brings some new modding tools. And i really hope that it will be released in few weeks.

Zapmeister

March 21st, 2004, 11:40 PM

I hope it fixes the most important bugs which are, in order of importance (in my view):

1. Server crashes
2. Utgard theme
3. Call of the Wild works in non-forest

dzbabi

March 22nd, 2004, 12:47 PM

I don�t want to read the whole Bug Threat, but what is the "Utgart Theme" Bug?

I think it is more important to make the AI better:
-Bulding Forts
-Building much more racespecific Units :-(
-Changing Tactics

Endoperez

March 22nd, 2004, 03:33 PM

Utgard theme bug makes Utgard theme of Jotunheim start with Abysian home site Smouldering Cone instead of their own site, and the Seithkonas are normal soldiers instead of mages... That is, you ONLY have the special mages of Abysia (and Gygja?)... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

dzbabi

March 22nd, 2004, 03:38 PM

I tried it 10 Minutes ago... how can this happen:(

Gandalf Parker

March 22nd, 2004, 03:46 PM

Originally posted by dzbabi:
I think it is more important to make the AI better:
-Bulding Forts
-Building much more racespecific Units :-(
-Changing Tactics Two problems with the "improve the AI" thing. One is that is a SoloPlayer-only thing which kindof drops it on the list (personally Im 95% solo player but I can see that this is true). Although the fact that it would improve the demo and maybe improve sales might give it some points it still doesnt seem to hit the fun-to-do list. Something might get done but I dont think it will ever be as much as we SP's want.

The other problem is that while many say they want it improved, there is still very little work done by any of us to try and pinpoint specific suggestions. There is only one AI so it would take coming up with some specific rules on castles/national-units/tactics which are play-tested as though you were the AI (force yourself to play by those rules) and see if they hold up for just the one nation that comes to mind or for all nations. (there are a number of threads on this subject if you want to use the "search" to join in)

[ March 22, 2004, 13:46: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

archaeolept

March 22nd, 2004, 03:46 PM

a misplaced comma or somesuch http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Utgard gets skratti, warlock apprentices, warlocks, and demonbred. they can also build lava warriors, and have access to seithkona using Gift of Reason.
Not too shabby, IMO. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

GavinWheeler

March 22nd, 2004, 03:49 PM

Originally posted by dzbabi:
I tried it 10 Minutes ago... how can this happen:( A small error in the code can have unforseen consequences. Anyway, the other Jotunheim themes work fine, so it isn't too bad.

I'm tempted to say that the next patch is already on the download page, it's just nonexistant and unknown, but That Would Be Evil. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

ioticus

March 22nd, 2004, 07:57 PM

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by dzbabi:
I think it is more important to make the AI better:
-Bulding Forts
-Building much more racespecific Units :-(
-Changing Tactics Two problems with the "improve the AI" thing. One is that is a SoloPlayer-only thing which kindof drops it on the list (personally Im 95% solo player but I can see that this is true). Although the fact that it would improve the demo and maybe improve sales might give it some points it still doesnt seem to hit the fun-to-do list. Something might get done but I dont think it will ever be as much as we SP's want.

<hr /></blockquote>Well, I hope us single-player gamers don't get shafted again. I've seen this happen in too many games and I'm sick and tired of it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

fahdiz

March 22nd, 2004, 08:21 PM

Originally posted by splooger:
Well, I hope us single-player gamers don't get shafted again. I've seen this happen in too many games and I'm sick and tired of it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif Dominions II was designed from the ground up with multiplayer in mind. The fact that there's a fun singleplayer component is just icing on the sweet, sweet cake.

Psitticine

March 22nd, 2004, 08:44 PM

Utgard should be all fixed up. There are a lot of other improvements as well. It'll be released as soon as everybody is sure there's not another problem like Utgard lurking in it, and since we've not been testing it for a full week even, that'll be a bit.

I can't talk too much about details, alas, but there are some heavily-requested things in it that should make people very happy.

Taqwus

March 22nd, 2004, 08:48 PM

Eeeeexcellent.
Support this good for the original was a major reason why Dom II was, if memory serves, the only computer game I've ever preordered.

Psitticine

March 22nd, 2004, 08:55 PM

I certainly don't see any signs they'll ever stop working on it. It is obviously a very fulfilling project for Illwinter and company. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Gandalf Parker

March 22nd, 2004, 09:41 PM

Originally posted by Psitticine:
I certainly don't see any signs they'll ever stop working on it. It is obviously a very fulfilling project for Illwinter and company. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I agree. The only thing that worries me is that I have seen projects like this get blown off by too much negative feedback. Feedback is good but Ive seen Devs just drop off because it seemed like no one liked it, and then the Users are all saying "oh but we really felt that the game was 99% excellent". Or they would say after the fact that their harsh words over things "broken" were really just meant as wishlist suggestions.

There are more ways to "pay" for the things you enjoy and support efforts to get more than by just dollars. All in all though THIS board has been pretty good at balancing praise and criticism
http://smileys.smileycentral.com/cat/4/4_17_11.gif ('http://www.smileycentral.com/?partner=ZSzeb008')

[ March 22, 2004, 20:05: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

PrinzMegaherz

March 22nd, 2004, 10:39 PM

The only thing that worries me is that I have seen projects like this get blown off by too much negative feedback. Feedback is good but Ive seen Devs just drop off because it seemed like no one liked it, and then the Users are all saying "oh but we really felt that the game was 99% excellent". hehe, I would not worry about that. Indeed, there is so much positive feedback in this forum that we should consider to reduce it a bit or the devs will most likely go megalomaniac.

johan osterman

March 22nd, 2004, 10:52 PM

Originally posted by PrinzMegaherz:
hehe, I would not worry about that. Indeed, there is so much positive feedback in this forum that we should consider to reduce it a bit or the devs will most likely go megalomaniac. Too late.

Edit: Also megalomania is a helpfull trait for godgame design.

[ March 22, 2004, 20:56: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

March 22nd, 2004, 10:58 PM

Come on, this coming from a guy whose avatar is a big head?

Lets get realistic folks!

Plus I thought swedes were already megalomaniacs by geography ;P

[ March 22, 2004, 21:00: Message edited by: Zen ]

magnate

March 24th, 2004, 07:40 PM

One thing I'd like to see in the next patch is a 2nd visit to the races screen, after the map is chosen. It shouldn't be too hard to do, and you don't even have to allow any changes on this 2nd visit (open to debate but whatever), but just show us what changes the map selection has made to the race selections. This would vastly simplify the use of user-made maps and scenarios, especially for SP. Good for MP too - maybe you could choose a different race if you really didn't like the map they chose ....

CC

Stormbinder

March 25th, 2004, 03:32 AM

What I would love to see is some way of selecting which players you want to send message to. (like to everybody other than Ermor http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ). It is huge pain in the butt to typ the same long message 15 times, especially since there there are no "copy and paste" function avalable.

It's not only ermor of course, you often have few allies and you oftten want to send them similar messadge. as it is you have to type it again and again, which is vert frustrating and discourages dimplomacy in the game, unless you have unlimited time to retype your Messages.

Also as me and many other players have noticed, currently by the end of every medium and long MP games 99% of gem income comes from not from your provinces , but from stacked hundreds and hundreds of clams and fever fetishes. Many players myslef included think it is not how this game was intended to be played, with all these nice magic gem-producing sites , eetc. IMHO magic shold mostly come from the magical lands you control, not from 500 clams that give you astral to alchemy into everything else (mostly into water to make more clams). It would be great if the cost of clams would be increased to 15 or 20 and their would be moved to con6. That would still make them avalaible to people who really wants but it would make end game much more fun and strategic than current clam hording. Same (although to slighly lesser degree goes for fever fetishes). Btw the desease cost of them is not really a disadvantage, since you can just give two fetishes to the cheapest undeads asiting in your fort and and forget about them, since undeads have no deseases.

Also I wanted to say that despite this the game is really fantastic and obviously work of love for developers, as well as pretty well balanced, I am enjoying it more than any otehr games during Last few years. That's why I am posting this - because I would love to see it a bit more balanced in the area where in my and many other MP players opinions it is still unfortuantly not very balanced.

With best regards,
Stormbinder

March 25th, 2004, 05:41 AM

That's an interesting way of saying you and other people define something a certain way without having them speak for themselves.. I personally think the game is extremely balanced.

It has slight issues, most of which stem from certain nations but "not very balanced" is what I would consider an innaccurate statement.

Alexander Seil

March 25th, 2004, 06:34 AM

Negative feedback in this case is simply ridiculous...this game is the FIRST game that beat Master of Magic. I didn't expect much when I downloaded the demo, but once I actually started playing and saw the sheer depth and detail of this masterpiece, I realized it was a MoM-killer. This is the end of the fantasy strategy genre...there's nothing else to make now http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Stormbinder

March 25th, 2004, 06:49 AM

Originally posted by Zen:
That's an interesting way of saying you and other people define something a certain way without having them speak for themselves.. I personally think the game is extremely balanced. I am glad that you feel this way. However, I never said I speak for *you* Zen, so your sarcasm is misplaced. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif I only said that me and many other players, with whom I've spoken about it, feel this way, and this is true. If you don't like this statement, there is nothing I can do to help it.

It has slight issues, most of which stem from certain nations but "not very balanced" is what I would consider an innaccurate statement. [/QB]Me too. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif However this is not what I said. If you read my post carefully, you'll find out that I've said quite opposite, that the game is "well balanced". However it doesn't mean it is perfectly balanced. And the point of my post was to try to bring attention to the particular areas, where I feel there is opportunity for improvement, like messaging system and Clams-hording.

Like I said, I am deeply in love with this game. However it doesn't turn me into "fanboy" who would say that everything is absolutely perfect in the game and there is no need to change or improve anything.

With deep regards,
Stormbinder

[ March 25, 2004, 04:53: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Stormbinder

March 25th, 2004, 06:58 AM

Originally posted by Alexander Seil:
...this game is the FIRST game that beat Master of Magic. I agree. I didn't expect this to happen in my lifetime, but it is true nevertheless. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

This is the end of the fantasy strategy genre...there's nothing else to make now http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif [/QB]Not even Dominions 3? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Argitoth

March 25th, 2004, 08:07 AM

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
Also as me and many other players have noticed, currently by the end of every medium and long MP games 99% of gem income comes from not from your provinces , but from stacked hundreds and hundreds of clams and fever fetishes. Many players myslef included think it is not how this game was intended to be played, with all these nice magic gem-producing sites , eetc. IMHO magic shold mostly come from the magical lands you control, not from 500 clams that give you astral to alchemy into everything else500 clams is 5000 water gems!!! I've never seen, in all my gaming experience, someone abuse those types of items.

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Alexander Seil:
[qb] ...this game is the FIRST game that beat Master of Magic. I never played MoM, but I never thought it was that great. (hence i never played it)

[ March 25, 2004, 06:10: Message edited by: Argitoth ]

March 25th, 2004, 08:16 AM

I'd give the game more of a chance in "MP" me and people I play "MP" with think "this".

Truth be told, this game is massive. The level of depth requires alot to be known about it to even place a judgement of balance or what any ramifications mean.

Just as the "Clam" debate. Some feel it is overpowered, others do not, you have to take the full impact of what it does. What nations rely on the Clams before a 'hoarding' phase and if they are taken or switched, will they be 'in balance' as they were. Atlantis is a good example of this.

Just because you think something is 'out of balance' doesn't mean it is. And if you are still even learning the game what is your perspective of balance going to be? Someone uses something against you and you can't for some reason defeat it, suddenly it's imbalanced? If that is the criteria of balance then I'd much rather have the developers deciding balance. Just because I feel the developers have a pretty savvy grasp on the balance because they got it to this point doesn't make me any more of a fanboi, it does however stand to reason that if they see it pointed out enough they might have reason to look at it more. Try searching for Clams or SoS for an example.

This is especially true of what I consider a minor 'balance' issue as these.

Also messaging UI is covered by the general feeling of the current Developers willingness to do UI. That is not to say it is/will/willnot happen, but the priority of it and desire for it is probably low.

[ March 25, 2004, 06:32: Message edited by: Zen ]

Yossar

March 25th, 2004, 08:46 AM

Originally posted by Zen:
Also messaging UI is covered by the general feeling of the current Developers willingness to do UI. That is not to say it is/will/willnot happen, but the priority of it and desire for it is probably low. It's not my top priority but being able to send Messages to multiple people (not all) is something I also would really like to see.

March 25th, 2004, 09:07 AM

Originally posted by Yossar:
It's not my top priority but being able to send Messages to multiple people (not all) is something I also would really like to see. I wasn't saying it wasn't a part of the player's desire or priority. I was speaking of Illwinter's desire. I tried to hunt down the thread where JO put it very simply but I haven't been able to find it. Needless to say for those who do not already know, UI is not a favorite thing to program and thus has less importance to IW because it's not enjoyable for them to program. And being as IW doesn't have the resources to make programming their only endeavor, they are much likely to program what they enjoy programming as opposed to what they don't enjoy.

Stormbinder

March 25th, 2004, 01:18 PM

Originally posted by Zen:

Just because you think something is 'out of balance' doesn't mean it is. And if you are still even learning the game what is your perspective of balance going to be? Someone uses something against you and you can't for some reason defeat it, suddenly it's imbalanced? If that is the criteria of balance then I'd much rather have the developers deciding balance.
No, it is not my criteria. In fact I am hoarding clams myslef in my current games. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I am doing it because I have to do it to stay competitive in the long run in economic/gem race, but I don't like it. My main criteria as I said before is that I feel that the situation when 99% gem income by the end of the game comes from clams is not exactly what develepers had in mind when they designed this game. I may be wrong here of course, since I can't read developers mind, but based upon the fact that they put so much efforts into designing all these nice gem-prodicing sites and mechanism for searching for them, I don't believe that it was intended mostly for the begining and middle of the game, to jump-start mass clam-production.

Just as the "Clam" debate. Some feel it is overpowered, others do not, you have to take the full impact of what it does. What nations rely on the Clams before a 'hoarding' phase and if they are taken or switched, will they be 'in balance' as they were. Atlantis is a good example of this.Sure, some nations are relying on clams more than others, but I've noticed that almost any nation once they get semi-decent water or astral income as soon as they able to start making as much clams as they can, using alchemy if they have too. At least this was the case in all MP games that I've played so far. I am sure you have seen it more than me, so I don't really have to tell you this.

Just because I feel the developers have a pretty savvy grasp on the balance because they got it to this point doesn't make me any more of a fanboi, it does however stand to reason that if they see it pointed out enough they might have reason to look at it more. I agree. That's what I am trying to do here - to politely point out to the issue of massive clam hoarding, which I think is a bit unbalanced as of now, and expalining why I think so. To do something about it or not is of course for the developers to decide, based upon thier own judgement.

PhilD

March 25th, 2004, 08:41 PM

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Zen:

Just because you think something is 'out of balance' doesn't mean it is. And if you are still even learning the game what is your perspective of balance going to be? Someone uses something against you and you can't for some reason defeat it, suddenly it's imbalanced? If that is the criteria of balance then I'd much rather have the developers deciding balance.
No, it is not my criteria. In fact I am hoarding clams myslef in my current games. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I am doing it because I have to do it to stay competitive in the long run in economic/gem race, but I don't like it. My main criteria as I said before is that I feel that the situation when 99% gem income by the end of the game comes from clams is not exactly what develepers had in mind when they designed this game. I may be wrong here of course, since I can't read developers mind, but based upon the fact that they put so much efforts into designing all these nice gem-prodicing sites and mechanism for searching for them, I don't believe that it was intended mostly for the begining and middle of the game, to jump-start mass clam-production.
<hr /></blockquote>How long are your games? Are you playing 4-player games on the World map, or what?

I mean, your initial gem production is 5/turn. Even if it's 5 Water, this means you get to make one Clam every 2 turns, initially. For even, say, 80% of your gem income to be item-produced, assuming your sites produce, say, 10 per turn (rather small), requires 50 gem-producing items. That's 50 turns of using your natural production (assuming it's all of the right types) to turn into items (500 gems), meaning those items will have produced roughly 1200 gems by that time. That's investing your whole production into them, plus 50 turns of a mage, plus (currently) 25 commanders holding the items, which you're not likely to send on the field as random kill-me commanders - which means "lost" upkeep.

Anything faster, means your current return is smaller - because the already-produced items will have produced fewer gems.

If, during those 50 turns, none of your opponents has taken advantage of your sinking gems into slow-return investments, your map is too big. Or maybe your playgroup is too focused on this being the only viable strategy, and isn't otherwise expanding/attacking fast enough.

Gandalf Parker

March 25th, 2004, 10:16 PM

Originally posted by Cainehill:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by magnate:
One thing I'd like to see in the next patch is a 2nd visit to the races screen, after the map is chosen. It shouldn't be too hard to do, and you don't even have to allow any changes on this 2nd visit (open to debate but whatever), but just show us what changes the map selection has made to the race selections. This would vastly simplify the use of user-made maps and scenarios, especially for SP. Good for MP too - maybe you could choose a different race if you really didn't like the map they chose ....
Another good alternative to this, and easier to program, would be to have map selection come -before- race selection. That way you know how many provinces, how much water, whether there are a recommended number of races, restrictions on which races/nations that are played, etc.
<hr /></blockquote>I really cant see this. I tend to create a new game with more of an idea of what nation I want to play than with what map I want to play on. To choose from ALL the maps and then find out that my nation isnt a choice seems less desireable than to choose the nation then find out that all the maps are not available.

Its not that hard anyway to just hit ESC and back up to make a change the way it is now.

An option on the race selection screen to randomize which non-human-controlled races are in the game would be rather nice also, especially with graphs turned off. Let it be a surprise as you come across the nations in the game.I guess this could be interesting but at the moment thats a feature of the map controls. I generate maps daily on my site that randomize the AI opponents.

GavinWheeler

March 25th, 2004, 10:27 PM

Wouldn't it be even easier to simply compile a list of the maps&scenarios along with which nations could play them?

Then you can just consult that during the God creation process. No need for UI changes.

Cainehill

March 26th, 2004, 02:51 AM

Originally posted by magnate:
One thing I'd like to see in the next patch is a 2nd visit to the races screen, after the map is chosen. It shouldn't be too hard to do, and you don't even have to allow any changes on this 2nd visit (open to debate but whatever), but just show us what changes the map selection has made to the race selections. This would vastly simplify the use of user-made maps and scenarios, especially for SP. Good for MP too - maybe you could choose a different race if you really didn't like the map they chose ....
Another good alternative to this, and easier to program, would be to have map selection come -before- race selection. That way you know how many provinces, how much water, whether there are a recommended number of races, restrictions on which races/nations that are played, etc.

An option on the race selection screen to randomize which non-human-controlled races are in the game would be rather nice also, especially with graphs turned off. Let it be a surprise as you come across the nations in the game.

(I guess this would also require the "send message" screen to only show those nations you've made contact with. That actually makes more sense anyway, imo. Unless of course all Pretenders have a divine ability to sense the other beings of power. Still - you can't teleport gems or magic items to commanders who aren't at one of your labs, why would you be able to teleport them to a nation you haven't made contact with?)

Graeme Dice

April 2nd, 2004, 05:19 AM

Originally posted by PhilD:
How long are your games? Are you playing 4-player games on the World map, or what?It takes about 50 turns to go from a 5 astral income with no water to having 100 clams, assuming that absolutely no other site searching is done. If any site searching is done, then this number quickly drops to 100 clams by about turn 30-40 or sooner. 100 pearls a turn is a game breaker, since all it takes is 10 wishes for "Armageddon" to wipe out 90% of the entire world's population. Then the person with the massive income just needs to wish for gold and food as needed.

They definetly need some other kind of balancing factor, since they and earth blood stones are currently the only long term production item that doesn't have such a balancing factor. Soul contracts and lifelong protections horror mark the wearer so that he will get eaten before it gets too out of hand. Fever fetishes require you to alchemize with a 4 to 1 loss ratio to both nature and death gems to exploit severely, and earth blood stones require blood slaves, which are not available through alchemy. There should probably be _something_ done to the clams as currrently the best use of water gems and water magic is to convert them all to astral.

sergex

April 2nd, 2004, 06:21 AM

Yes, I agree with the below posters that the biggest imbalance in MP is the low cost of clams. If you raise them to construction 6 and change the cost appropriately they would be much more in balance.

I'm REALLY not one to cry "nerf", but I honestly think that the clams are way out of balance for the power they bring to a player's economy. It is at the point that if you don't horde clams then you can't compete in MP on large maps.

It would be nice to be able to restrict magic items to a specific number per player. Letting each player only use, say 10 clams maximum would help a lot. I'm not aware of anyone bringing up a magic item limit before, but if so what do the devs feel about that? Do they want the game to be decided by whoever hordes the most abusive items?

Kristoffer O

April 2nd, 2004, 07:09 AM

Originally posted by sergex:
Do they want the game to be decided by whoever hordes the most abusive items? Five bucks to the one who kills the hoarders http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Graeme Dice

April 2nd, 2004, 07:34 AM

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
Five bucks to the one who kills the hoarders http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif That would be a viable strategy except that a player with a large astral income can easily afford to cast and replace the various dome spells. There's not much point in trying even a flames from the sky if it only has a 7% chance of affecting the target province. Murdering winter is even worse, since 3 of the races are completely immune to it, and the other 4 heat races are almost always fairly safe.

Hoarding clams can be countered if you can find your opponent's holders before about turn 20-30. After that your chances of success become vanishingly small.

Zapmeister

April 2nd, 2004, 08:40 AM

Hoarding clams can be countered if you can find your opponent's holders before about turn 20-30. After that your chances of success become vanishingly small.I'm in a large game (Orania, 17 starters) which is approaching turn 70, and down to 5 active human players. One of those players is Graeme, playing R'lyeh. He has an Arcane Nexus and Strands of Arcane Power in play, so it's a fair bet that he's been exploiting clams and that, by his reckoning, he should now be unstoppable.

If he goes on to win despite being at war with the rest of the world, I'll join the throng declaring that this needs to be fixed, soon.

Teraswaerto

April 2nd, 2004, 09:29 AM

Even if he loses in a 4 vs 1 match-up it hardly proves that Clams are fine as they are. If it takes four non-Clam nations to defeat one Clam nation it can hardly be called balanced.

Zapmeister

April 2nd, 2004, 09:41 AM

Even if he loses in a 4 vs 1 match-up it hardly proves that Clams are fine as they are. If it takes four non-Clam nations to defeat one Clam nation it can hardly be called balanced.Sure, but I'm thinking he will probably win, removing any doubt on the matter.

Stormbinder

April 2nd, 2004, 09:55 AM

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by sergex:
Do they want the game to be decided by whoever hordes the most abusive items? Five bucks to the one who kills the hoarders http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif <hr /></blockquote>LOL. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Seriously KristofferO, you guys done terrific job in balancing everything in this game. Can't you please do something about clams? As you can see even in this tread many people feel that clam-haording gets way out of hand in long/medium games. And I would bet that many of those who don't feel this way just haven't meet with thier first addicitve clam-hoarder in MP game, or they would feel different. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Really simple and efective solution would be to raise cost and Con level of the clam, making it 20 water geams con 6, or perhaps 10 water and 5 or 10 nature, con 6 (it is a living thing after all, so nature gems used in construction would make good sense).

Or leave it as it is and like sergex suggested limit it to 10 per player. (it would take a little more coding than the first solution, but it can't be too dificult, right? After all you guys already have mechanisms in place to limit number of some items (Artifacts). Clams and fever fetishes could be named "Lesser Artifact" and have limit 10 or so per player.

So could you tell us what is your position about it? If you strongly feel that Clams are perfect the way they are now and should nbot be changed, than persoanlly I'll just drop this topic and will resign to living with current Version of clams, although I'll almsot certanly switch to short MP or SP Dominion2 games from now on. But at least I would stop kicking this horse if it is dead on arrival. I have no intensions on trolling on this board since I love this game dearly. Like other people here I am just trying to point out that I feel is really spoiling the end game for long/medium MP games. And like other said - I am usually the Last person to cry "nerf!", but I just can't think of anything that would fix it... ;(

[ April 02, 2004, 08:37: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Stormbinder

April 2nd, 2004, 10:17 AM

Originally posted by PhilD:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Stormbinder:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Zen:
[qb]

How long are your games? Are you playing 4-player games on the World map, or what?

I mean, your initial gem production is 5/turn. Even if it's 5 Water, this means you get to make one Clam every 2 turns, initially. For even, say, 80% of your gem income to be item-produced, assuming your sites produce, say, 10 per turn (rather small), requires 50 gem-producing items. That's 50 turns of using your natural production (assuming it's all of the right types) to turn into items (500 gems), meaning those items will have produced roughly 1200 gems by that time. That's investing your whole production into them, plus 50 turns of a mage, plus (currently) 25 commanders holding the items, which you're not likely to send on the field as random kill-me commanders - which means "lost" upkeep.

Anything faster, means your current return is smaller - because the already-produced items will have produced fewer gems.

If, during those 50 turns, none of your opponents has taken advantage of your sinking gems into slow-return investments, your map is too big. Or maybe your playgroup is too focused on this being the only viable strategy, and isn't otherwise expanding/attacking fast enough. <hr /></blockquote>I am sorry but your math is completely wrong PhilD. Just few most obvious examples:

You keep refering to "initail production of 5 gems per turn". What it has to do with clams hoarding? Obviously you are going to search for avalailable water and astral sites _before_ you are going to start real clam hoarding. At can be done with water2/astral1 mages, for 2 and 3 gems, both easely available. And even few clams will will supply you with all astral gems that you'll need for Astral Probe spell, or for Archaic Records later in the game when you are swiming in astrals from your pearls.

The argument about "high upkeep cost" on commanders hoarding clams is even worse. First of all what prevents you from giving clams to your reseachers, as everybody doing in MP? Or to your bloodhunting scouts/whatever? This way you lose nothing on upkeep. But even if you do have to hire special commanders for it later on, what prevents you from hiring 20 gp scouts and give them 2 clams each? Each scout cost 1.3 gp per turn in upkeep, and it'll supply you with 2 astrals per turn. Clearly 1.3 gp is nothing comparable to 2 astrals every turn, so it shouldn't be even seriously considered when deciding if clams are unbalanced.

And I am not even talking about sites bonuses to forging, or having few dwarven hammers used to produce clams every turn. Yes, hammer is not cheap, being 20 earth gems, but it's a long time investment. By themself Hammers are totally fine and cool itme, but when applied to already severely unbalanced 10water gems clams, making them 7 water gems each...

Sure, there is no quarantee that you'll find site with bonus production, but they are not _that_ rare, and they means the return of investent on _all_ your calms is 8 turns now instead of 10, since obviously you are going produce all your clams only on that site now for 8 water gems each. And that's even without Dwarven hammers.

More arguments could be writen, but I think that should be enough.

[ April 02, 2004, 08:25: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Jasper

April 2nd, 2004, 10:26 AM

IMHO you have not been at all convincing that Clams are broken.

You argument is essentially flawed, in that it assumes that the alternative to massive investment in clams is to do nothing with your water gems and forging mages, and that researching something other than Construction 4 early on has no value.

The true alternative is to use your income aggresively, and seize income and gem sources from your opponents. This gains you income immediately, and deprives them of it as well.

Needing 10 turns to recoup just your initial investment is pretty steep, and if you count oppurtunity cost IMHO it takes more like 15 turns before you begin to see returns. In games I've played half the players are typically out of the running by turn 30... I'd rather use my gems to try to stay in the surviving half, rather than invest them and pray I survive to the end game.

Stormbinder

April 2nd, 2004, 10:44 AM

Originally posted by Jasper:
IMHO you have not been at all convincing that Clams are broken.

You argument is essentially flawed, in that it assumes that the alternative to massive investment in clams is to do nothing with your water gems and forging mages, and that researching something other than Construction 4 early on has no value.

The true alternative is to use your income aggresively, and seize income and gem sources from your opponents. This gains you income immediately, and deprives them of it as well.

Needing 10 turns to recoup just your initial investment is pretty steep, and if you count oppurtunity cost IMHO it takes more like 15 turns before you begin to see returns. In games I've played half the players are typically out of the running by turn 30... I'd rather use my gems to try to stay in the surviving half, rather than invest them and pray I survive to the end game. If you have read my Posts carefully you must have noticed that I was refering to medium/long games- I've said it several times. Obviously clams are not an issue if the game is finished or almost fininshed by turn 30 or so.

That also means that you have no high-level spells, no high level summons in your games, et cetera. There is nothing wrong with such games if it fits your playstyle, it's just entirely different type of game from the ones than me and Graeme, Sergex, Zapmaeser and others were refering to.

What I don't understand is this - why some people are so opposed to it? If clam hoarding is not an issue according to them, than it shouldn't matter to them much if requirements for the clams would raise a little? One of the person (no names here, but he haven't posted on this thread yet http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ) who is a great player and whom I highly respect as a Dom2 opponent was strongly opposed increasing cost or reqs for Clams - and that despite the fact that he is notorious clam hoarder. (actually more likely not "despite" but "because" )

Now I am not suggesting that everybody who is against Clam-changes is the secret addicted clam hoarder. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif That would be way too much and I am not a conspiracy freak. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif But I know from experience that at least some of the most vocal ones are in fact using massive clam-haarding strategy again and again to great success, and they are objecting to any changes to Clams so strongly excactly because it would kill their favorite "I-Won" tactic.

[ April 02, 2004, 08:59: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Peter Ebbesen

April 2nd, 2004, 12:15 PM

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
It takes about 50 turns to go from a 5 astral income with no water to having 100 clams, assuming that absolutely no other site searching is done.No, it does not.... It takes 69 rounds http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif In 50 rounds you reach a mere 40 clams according to my astal calculator http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif (or 87 if you assume a 25% forge bonus).

The greatest limitations on astral clam abuse remain the need for sufficient water 2 mages and not using your gems for other purposes.

Personally, I think the other players have failed in a major way if one nation is able to survive without using a significant fraction of its gems each round but perhaps that is just me.

Anyhow, I must certainly agree with Graeme Dice that it is potentially abusive in a major way in long term games. Just look at this output from the astral calculator using a 25% forge bonus and a base income of 5 astral and nothing else whatsoever, if you are in doubt:

[Actually, there is a bug in the following, as it only costs 14 astral per clam due to the water price being rounded to 7 rather than 7.5 per clam]

<blockquote>code:<hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Astral Calculator
Calculating Astral Clam abuse based on 5 base astal income and a
25 forge bonus (15 astral per clam) wasting 0 percent of surplus per turn

0: Clams= 0 Income= 5 Waste= 0 Store= 5 --> Produced 0 clams
1: Clams= 0 Income= 5 Waste= 0 Store= 10 --> Produced 0 clams
2: Clams= 0 Income= 5 Waste= 0 Store= 15 --> Produced 1 clams
3: Clams= 0 Income= 5 Waste= 0 Store= 5 --> Produced 0 clams
4: Clams= 1 Income= 6 Waste= 0 Store= 11 --> Produced 0 clams
5: Clams= 1 Income= 6 Waste= 0 Store= 17 --> Produced 1 clams
6: Clams= 1 Income= 6 Waste= 0 Store= 8 --> Produced 0 clams
7: Clams= 2 Income= 7 Waste= 0 Store= 15 --> Produced 1 clams
8: Clams= 2 Income= 7 Waste= 0 Store= 7 --> Produced 0 clams
9: Clams= 3 Income= 8 Waste= 0 Store= 15 --> Produced 1 clams
10: Clams= 3 Income= 8 Waste= 0 Store= 8 --> Produced 0 clams
11: Clams= 4 Income= 9 Waste= 0 Store= 17 --> Produced 1 clams
12: Clams= 4 Income= 9 Waste= 0 Store= 11 --> Produced 0 clams
13: Clams= 5 Income= 10 Waste= 0 Store= 21 --> Produced 1 clams
14: Clams= 5 Income= 10 Waste= 0 Store= 16 --> Produced 1 clams
15: Clams= 6 Income= 11 Waste= 0 Store= 12 --> Produced 0 clams
16: Clams= 7 Income= 12 Waste= 0 Store= 24 --> Produced 1 clams
17: Clams= 7 Income= 12 Waste= 0 Store= 21 --> Produced 1 clams
18: Clams= 8 Income= 13 Waste= 0 Store= 19 --> Produced 1 clams
19: Clams= 9 Income= 14 Waste= 0 Store= 18 --> Produced 1 clams
20: Clams= 10 Income= 15 Waste= 0 Store= 18 --> Produced 1 clams
21: Clams= 11 Income= 16 Waste= 0 Store= 19 --> Produced 1 clams
22: Clams= 12 Income= 17 Waste= 0 Store= 21 --> Produced 1 clams
23: Clams= 13 Income= 18 Waste= 0 Store= 24 --> Produced 1 clams
24: Clams= 14 Income= 19 Waste= 0 Store= 28 --> Produced 1 clams
25: Clams= 15 Income= 20 Waste= 0 Store= 33 --> Produced 2 clams
26: Clams= 16 Income= 21 Waste= 0 Store= 24 --> Produced 1 clams
27: Clams= 18 Income= 23 Waste= 0 Store= 32 --> Produced 2 clams
28: Clams= 19 Income= 24 Waste= 0 Store= 26 --> Produced 1 clams
29: Clams= 21 Income= 26 Waste= 0 Store= 37 --> Produced 2 clams
30: Clams= 22 Income= 27 Waste= 0 Store= 34 --> Produced 2 clams
31: Clams= 24 Income= 29 Waste= 0 Store= 33 --> Produced 2 clams
32: Clams= 26 Income= 31 Waste= 0 Store= 34 --> Produced 2 clams
33: Clams= 28 Income= 33 Waste= 0 Store= 37 --> Produced 2 clams
34: Clams= 30 Income= 35 Waste= 0 Store= 42 --> Produced 2 clams
35: Clams= 32 Income= 37 Waste= 0 Store= 49 --> Produced 3 clams
36: Clams= 34 Income= 39 Waste= 0 Store= 43 --> Produced 2 clams
37: Clams= 37 Income= 42 Waste= 0 Store= 55 --> Produced 3 clams
38: Clams= 39 Income= 44 Waste= 0 Store= 54 --> Produced 3 clams
39: Clams= 42 Income= 47 Waste= 0 Store= 56 --> Produced 3 clams
40: Clams= 45 Income= 50 Waste= 0 Store= 61 --> Produced 4 clams
41: Clams= 48 Income= 53 Waste= 0 Store= 54 --> Produced 3 clams
42: Clams= 52 Income= 57 Waste= 0 Store= 66 --> Produced 4 clams
43: Clams= 55 Income= 60 Waste= 0 Store= 66 --> Produced 4 clams
44: Clams= 59 Income= 64 Waste= 0 Store= 70 --> Produced 4 clams
45: Clams= 63 Income= 68 Waste= 0 Store= 78 --> Produced 5 clams
46: Clams= 67 Income= 72 Waste= 0 Store= 75 --> Produced 5 clams
47: Clams= 72 Income= 77 Waste= 0 Store= 77 --> Produced 5 clams
48: Clams= 77 Income= 82 Waste= 0 Store= 84 --> Produced 5 clams
49: Clams= 82 Income= 87 Waste= 0 Store= 96 --> Produced 6 clams
50: Clams= 87 Income= 92 Waste= 0 Store= 98 --> Produced 6 clams
51: Clams= 93 Income= 98 Waste= 0 Store= 106 --> Produced 7 clams
52: Clams= 99 Income= 104 Waste= 0 Store= 105 --> Produced 7 clams
53: Clams= 106 Income= 111 Waste= 0 Store= 111 --> Produced 7 clams
54: Clams= 113 Income= 118 Waste= 0 Store= 124 --> Produced 8 clams
55: Clams= 120 Income= 125 Waste= 0 Store= 129 --> Produced 8 clams
56: Clams= 128 Income= 133 Waste= 0 Store= 142 --> Produced 9 clams
57: Clams= 136 Income= 141 Waste= 0 Store= 148 --> Produced 9 clams
58: Clams= 145 Income= 150 Waste= 0 Store= 163 --> Produced 10 clams
59: Clams= 154 Income= 159 Waste= 0 Store= 172 --> Produced 11 clams
60: Clams= 164 Income= 169 Waste= 0 Store= 176 --> Produced 11 clams
61: Clams= 175 Income= 180 Waste= 0 Store= 191 --> Produced 12 clams
62: Clams= 186 Income= 191 Waste= 0 Store= 202 --> Produced 13 clams
63: Clams= 198 Income= 203 Waste= 0 Store= 210 --> Produced 14 clams
64: Clams= 211 Income= 216 Waste= 0 Store= 216 --> Produced 14 clams
65: Clams= 225 Income= 230 Waste= 0 Store= 236 --> Produced 15 clams
66: Clams= 239 Income= 244 Waste= 0 Store= 255 --> Produced 17 clams
67: Clams= 254 Income= 259 Waste= 0 Store= 259 --> Produced 17 clams
68: Clams= 271 Income= 276 Waste= 0 Store= 280 --> Produced 18 clams
69: Clams= 288 Income= 293 Waste= 0 Store= 303 --> Produced 20 clams
70: Clams= 306 Income= 311 Waste= 0 Store= 314 --> Produced 20 clams
71: Clams= 326 Income= 331 Waste= 0 Store= 345 --> Produced 23 clams
72: Clams= 346 Income= 351 Waste= 0 Store= 351 --> Produced 23 clams
73: Clams= 369 Income= 374 Waste= 0 Store= 380 --> Produced 25 clams
74: Clams= 392 Income= 397 Waste= 0 Store= 402 --> Produced 26 clams
75: Clams= 417 Income= 422 Waste= 0 Store= 434 --> Produced 28 clams
76: Clams= 443 Income= 448 Waste= 0 Store= 462 --> Produced 30 clams
77: Clams= 471 Income= 476 Waste= 0 Store= 488 --> Produced 32 clams
78: Clams= 501 Income= 506 Waste= 0 Store= 514 --> Produced 34 clams
79: Clams= 533 Income= 538 Waste= 0 Store= 542 --> Produced 36 clams
80: Clams= 567 Income= 572 Waste= 0 Store= 574 --> Produced 38 clams
81: Clams= 603 Income= 608 Waste= 0 Store= 612 --> Produced 40 clams
82: Clams= 641 Income= 646 Waste= 0 Store= 658 --> Produced 43 clams
83: Clams= 681 Income= 686 Waste= 0 Store= 699 --> Produced 46 clams
84: Clams= 724 Income= 729 Waste= 0 Store= 738 --> Produced 49 clams
85: Clams= 770 Income= 775 Waste= 0 Store= 778 --> Produced 51 clams
86: Clams= 819 Income= 824 Waste= 0 Store= 837 --> Produced 55 clams
87: Clams= 870 Income= 875 Waste= 0 Store= 887 --> Produced 59 clams
88: Clams= 925 Income= 930 Waste= 0 Store= 932 --> Produced 62 clams
89: Clams= 984 Income= 989 Waste= 0 Store= 991 --> Produced 66 clams
90: Clams=1046 Income=1051 Waste= 0 Store=1052 --> Produced 70 clams
91: Clams=1112 Income=1117 Waste= 0 Store=1119 --> Produced 74 clams
92: Clams=1182 Income=1187 Waste= 0 Store=1196 --> Produced 79 clams
93: Clams=1256 Income=1261 Waste= 0 Store=1272 --> Produced 84 clams
94: Clams=1335 Income=1340 Waste= 0 Store=1352 --> Produced 90 clams
95: Clams=1419 Income=1424 Waste= 0 Store=1426 --> Produced 95 clams
96: Clams=1509 Income=1514 Waste= 0 Store=1515 --> Produced 101 clams
97: Clams=1604 Income=1609 Waste= 0 Store=1609 --> Produced 107 clams
98: Clams=1705 Income=1710 Waste= 0 Store=1714 --> Produced 114 clams
99: Clams=1812 Income=1817 Waste= 0 Store=1821 --> Produced 121 clams
100: Clams=1926 Income=1931 Waste= 0 Store=1937 --> Produced 129 clams</pre><hr /></blockquote>That was scary! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

Let us make it less so. Assuming that 50% of all astral gems stored above those needed to make a single clam are "wasted" on other types of magic and that no Dwarven hammers whatsoever are made (utopian, but let us assume it for a moment), we get (still based on only the starting income and nothing else)

<blockquote>code:<hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Astral Calculator
Calculating Astral Clam abuse based on 5 base astal income and a
0 forge bonus (20 astral per clam) wasting 50 percent of surplus per turn

0: Clams= 0 Income= 5 Waste= 0 Store= 5 --> Produced 0 clams
1: Clams= 0 Income= 5 Waste= 0 Store= 10 --> Produced 0 clams
2: Clams= 0 Income= 5 Waste= 0 Store= 15 --> Produced 0 clams
3: Clams= 0 Income= 5 Waste= 0 Store= 20 --> Produced 1 clams
4: Clams= 0 Income= 5 Waste= 0 Store= 5 --> Produced 0 clams
5: Clams= 1 Income= 6 Waste= 0 Store= 11 --> Produced 0 clams
6: Clams= 1 Income= 6 Waste= 0 Store= 17 --> Produced 0 clams
7: Clams= 1 Income= 6 Waste= 1 Store= 22 --> Produced 1 clams
8: Clams= 1 Income= 6 Waste= 0 Store= 8 --> Produced 0 clams
9: Clams= 2 Income= 7 Waste= 0 Store= 15 --> Produced 0 clams
10: Clams= 2 Income= 7 Waste= 1 Store= 21 --> Produced 1 clams
11: Clams= 2 Income= 7 Waste= 0 Store= 8 --> Produced 0 clams
12: Clams= 3 Income= 8 Waste= 0 Store= 16 --> Produced 0 clams
13: Clams= 3 Income= 8 Waste= 2 Store= 22 --> Produced 1 clams
14: Clams= 3 Income= 8 Waste= 0 Store= 10 --> Produced 0 clams
15: Clams= 4 Income= 9 Waste= 0 Store= 19 --> Produced 0 clams
16: Clams= 4 Income= 9 Waste= 4 Store= 24 --> Produced 1 clams
17: Clams= 4 Income= 9 Waste= 0 Store= 13 --> Produced 0 clams
18: Clams= 5 Income= 10 Waste= 1 Store= 22 --> Produced 1 clams
19: Clams= 5 Income= 10 Waste= 0 Store= 12 --> Produced 0 clams
20: Clams= 6 Income= 11 Waste= 1 Store= 22 --> Produced 1 clams
21: Clams= 6 Income= 11 Waste= 0 Store= 13 --> Produced 0 clams
22: Clams= 7 Income= 12 Waste= 2 Store= 23 --> Produced 1 clams
23: Clams= 7 Income= 12 Waste= 0 Store= 15 --> Produced 0 clams
24: Clams= 8 Income= 13 Waste= 4 Store= 24 --> Produced 1 clams
25: Clams= 8 Income= 13 Waste= 0 Store= 17 --> Produced 0 clams
26: Clams= 9 Income= 14 Waste= 5 Store= 26 --> Produced 1 clams
27: Clams= 9 Income= 14 Waste= 0 Store= 20 --> Produced 1 clams
28: Clams= 10 Income= 15 Waste= 0 Store= 15 --> Produced 0 clams
29: Clams= 11 Income= 16 Waste= 5 Store= 26 --> Produced 1 clams
30: Clams= 11 Income= 16 Waste= 1 Store= 21 --> Produced 1 clams
31: Clams= 12 Income= 17 Waste= 0 Store= 18 --> Produced 0 clams
32: Clams= 13 Income= 18 Waste= 8 Store= 28 --> Produced 1 clams
33: Clams= 13 Income= 18 Waste= 3 Store= 23 --> Produced 1 clams
34: Clams= 14 Income= 19 Waste= 1 Store= 21 --> Produced 1 clams
35: Clams= 15 Income= 20 Waste= 0 Store= 21 --> Produced 1 clams
36: Clams= 16 Income= 21 Waste= 1 Store= 21 --> Produced 1 clams
37: Clams= 17 Income= 22 Waste= 1 Store= 22 --> Produced 1 clams
38: Clams= 18 Income= 23 Waste= 2 Store= 23 --> Produced 1 clams
39: Clams= 19 Income= 24 Waste= 3 Store= 24 --> Produced 1 clams
40: Clams= 20 Income= 25 Waste= 4 Store= 25 --> Produced 1 clams
41: Clams= 21 Income= 26 Waste= 5 Store= 26 --> Produced 1 clams
42: Clams= 22 Income= 27 Waste= 6 Store= 27 --> Produced 1 clams
43: Clams= 23 Income= 28 Waste= 7 Store= 28 --> Produced 1 clams
44: Clams= 24 Income= 29 Waste= 8 Store= 29 --> Produced 1 clams
45: Clams= 25 Income= 30 Waste= 9 Store= 30 --> Produced 1 clams
46: Clams= 26 Income= 31 Waste= 10 Store= 31 --> Produced 1 clams
47: Clams= 27 Income= 32 Waste= 11 Store= 32 --> Produced 1 clams
48: Clams= 28 Income= 33 Waste= 12 Store= 33 --> Produced 1 clams
49: Clams= 29 Income= 34 Waste= 13 Store= 34 --> Produced 1 clams
50: Clams= 30 Income= 35 Waste= 14 Store= 35 --> Produced 1 clams
51: Clams= 31 Income= 36 Waste= 15 Store= 36 --> Produced 1 clams
52: Clams= 32 Income= 37 Waste= 16 Store= 37 --> Produced 1 clams
53: Clams= 33 Income= 38 Waste= 17 Store= 38 --> Produced 1 clams
54: Clams= 34 Income= 39 Waste= 18 Store= 39 --> Produced 1 clams
55: Clams= 35 Income= 40 Waste= 19 Store= 40 --> Produced 2 clams
56: Clams= 36 Income= 41 Waste= 10 Store= 31 --> Produced 1 clams
57: Clams= 38 Income= 43 Waste= 17 Store= 37 --> Produced 1 clams
58: Clams= 39 Income= 44 Waste= 20 Store= 41 --> Produced 2 clams
59: Clams= 40 Income= 45 Waste= 13 Store= 33 --> Produced 1 clams
60: Clams= 42 Income= 47 Waste= 20 Store= 40 --> Produced 2 clams
61: Clams= 43 Income= 48 Waste= 14 Store= 34 --> Produced 1 clams
62: Clams= 45 Income= 50 Waste= 22 Store= 42 --> Produced 2 clams
63: Clams= 46 Income= 51 Waste= 16 Store= 37 --> Produced 1 clams
64: Clams= 48 Income= 53 Waste= 25 Store= 45 --> Produced 2 clams
65: Clams= 49 Income= 54 Waste= 19 Store= 40 --> Produced 2 clams
66: Clams= 51 Income= 56 Waste= 18 Store= 38 --> Produced 1 clams
67: Clams= 53 Income= 58 Waste= 28 Store= 48 --> Produced 2 clams
68: Clams= 54 Income= 59 Waste= 23 Store= 44 --> Produced 2 clams
69: Clams= 56 Income= 61 Waste= 22 Store= 43 --> Produced 2 clams
70: Clams= 58 Income= 63 Waste= 23 Store= 43 --> Produced 2 clams
71: Clams= 60 Income= 65 Waste= 24 Store= 44 --> Produced 2 clams
72: Clams= 62 Income= 67 Waste= 25 Store= 46 --> Produced 2 clams
73: Clams= 64 Income= 69 Waste= 27 Store= 48 --> Produced 2 clams
74: Clams= 66 Income= 71 Waste= 29 Store= 50 --> Produced 2 clams
75: Clams= 68 Income= 73 Waste= 31 Store= 52 --> Produced 2 clams
76: Clams= 70 Income= 75 Waste= 33 Store= 54 --> Produced 2 clams
77: Clams= 72 Income= 77 Waste= 35 Store= 56 --> Produced 2 clams
78: Clams= 74 Income= 79 Waste= 37 Store= 58 --> Produced 2 clams
79: Clams= 76 Income= 81 Waste= 39 Store= 60 --> Produced 3 clams
80: Clams= 78 Income= 83 Waste= 31 Store= 52 --> Produced 2 clams
81: Clams= 81 Income= 86 Waste= 39 Store= 59 --> Produced 2 clams
82: Clams= 83 Income= 88 Waste= 43 Store= 64 --> Produced 3 clams
83: Clams= 85 Income= 90 Waste= 37 Store= 57 --> Produced 2 clams
84: Clams= 88 Income= 93 Waste= 45 Store= 65 --> Produced 3 clams
85: Clams= 90 Income= 95 Waste= 40 Store= 60 --> Produced 3 clams
86: Clams= 93 Income= 98 Waste= 39 Store= 59 --> Produced 2 clams
87: Clams= 96 Income= 101 Waste= 50 Store= 70 --> Produced 3 clams
88: Clams= 98 Income= 103 Waste= 46 Store= 67 --> Produced 3 clams
89: Clams= 101 Income= 106 Waste= 46 Store= 67 --> Produced 3 clams
90: Clams= 104 Income= 109 Waste= 48 Store= 68 --> Produced 3 clams
91: Clams= 107 Income= 112 Waste= 50 Store= 70 --> Produced 3 clams
92: Clams= 110 Income= 115 Waste= 52 Store= 73 --> Produced 3 clams
93: Clams= 113 Income= 118 Waste= 55 Store= 76 --> Produced 3 clams
94: Clams= 116 Income= 121 Waste= 58 Store= 79 --> Produced 3 clams
95: Clams= 119 Income= 124 Waste= 61 Store= 82 --> Produced 4 clams
96: Clams= 122 Income= 127 Waste= 54 Store= 75 --> Produced 3 clams
97: Clams= 126 Income= 131 Waste= 63 Store= 83 --> Produced 4 clams
98: Clams= 129 Income= 134 Waste= 58 Store= 79 --> Produced 3 clams
99: Clams= 133 Income= 138 Waste= 68 Store= 89 --> Produced 4 clams
100: Clams= 136 Income= 141 Waste= 65 Store= 85 --> Produced 4 clams</pre><hr /></blockquote>As far as I am concerned, that just means that nations with easy access to both water and astral magic must be hammered frequently to force them to use their astral for other things than astral abuse - for the numbers are potentially scary. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ April 02, 2004, 10:50: Message edited by: Peter Ebbesen ]

Stormbinder

April 2nd, 2004, 12:57 PM

Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
It takes about 50 turns to go from a 5 astral income with no water to having 100 clams, assuming that absolutely no other site searching is done.No, it does not.... It takes 69 rounds http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif In 50 rounds you reach a mere 40 clams according to my astal calculator http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif (or 87 if you assume a 25% forge bonus).

/tables skiped/

...

<hr /></blockquote>I'll be damned! Thanks Peter. I knew it was scary, but I didn't realize it was _that_ scary. ;(

[ April 02, 2004, 11:04: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

magnate

April 2nd, 2004, 01:35 PM

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Cainehill:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by magnate:
One thing I'd like to see in the next patch is a 2nd visit to the races screen, after the map is chosen. It shouldn't be too hard to do, and you don't even have to allow any changes on this 2nd visit (open to debate but whatever), but just show us what changes the map selection has made to the race selections. This would vastly simplify the use of user-made maps and scenarios, especially for SP. Good for MP too - maybe you could choose a different race if you really didn't like the map they chose ....
Another good alternative to this, and easier to program, would be to have map selection come -before- race selection. That way you know how many provinces, how much water, whether there are a recommended number of races, restrictions on which races/nations that are played, etc.
<hr /></blockquote>I really cant see this. I tend to create a new game with more of an idea of what nation I want to play than with what map I want to play on. To choose from ALL the maps and then find out that my nation isnt a choice seems less desireable than to choose the nation then find out that all the maps are not available.

Its not that hard anyway to just hit ESC and back up to make a change the way it is now.

An option on the race selection screen to randomize which non-human-controlled races are in the game would be rather nice also, especially with graphs turned off. Let it be a surprise as you come across the nations in the game.I guess this could be interesting but at the moment thats a feature of the map controls. I generate maps daily on my site that randomize the AI opponents. <hr /></blockquote>Cainehill - thanks for that - I suggested it a while ago, before I found this thread (which has been totally dominated by a single issue), but I changed my suggestion in order to appease those, like Gandalf, who want to choose their race first. This way it's minimal change to the status quo.

Gandalf - you seem a little dismissive of the alternative view. It *IS* painful to Esc back up to the races screen, check/change all the selections and then reselect the map. It's tedious and, if the map has specific settings which override your choices, frustrating. Having a second visit to the races screen after choosing the map would simply and precisely alleviate this problem. It would cost you one single extra click on "Ok".

At the moment there is no alternative but to know quite a lot about the map you want to play before you choose the races (ie. how much water, etc.). It would make the game more user-friendly if you could browse the maps before *finalising* the race selections. I don't mind a trip to the races screen first as well.

CC

Peter Ebbesen

April 2nd, 2004, 04:35 PM

Originally posted by Wendigo:
<blockquote>quote:<hr /> 20: Clams= 10 Income= 15 Waste= 0 Store= 18 --> Produced 1 clamsI am with Jasper. I am far from impressed by the above numbers, and those are a 'best possible' scenario for an astral power: Construction research for clam forging + 1 dwarven hammer already forged available both from turn3, which is basically impossible.
<hr /></blockquote>Well, that is going too far. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Remember that THAT projection was based on ONLY using a starting income of 5 gems without using any gems gained through finding water or astral sites - which is a quite unlikely scenario; it just happens to be a scenario that is easy to calculate the results of. In other words, it was not the "best possible" scenario, it was the "best possible using only the gem income from your own capital" - which is a very different matter.

Anyone who goes for a dedicated clam of pearls strategy is very likely to get better than 5 astral and 0 water/round from ordinary sources within a dozen rounds or so, which kickstarts the process. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ April 02, 2004, 14:36: Message edited by: Peter Ebbesen ]

Graeme Dice

April 2nd, 2004, 04:40 PM

Originally posted by Wendigo:
Even if it was, forfeiting the gem income from 20 turns (100 gems!) to get a +10 gem income is far from impressive. On standard settings I am pretty sure I could get a better income with half the investment by just casting a few search spells.Who says you won't cast search spells? You must remember that water magic is essentially useless other than for quickness, so it's not a particularly big loss to convert all your water gems to astral ones. It does only take about 35 turns to get to 100 clams once you have a decent income in other gems, as that's exactly what I've done with R'Lyeh.

Even so, it's disputable that a clam strategy would be a better investment than an early casting of Voice of Tiamat on every sea: Sacrifice 10 gems for a 1 gem income, or 8 gems for a 2+ income?No reason you can't do both. But once you've searched all your water provinces, there's no reason not to make clams.

Wendigo

April 2nd, 2004, 05:04 PM

Hey Peter, don't blame me for using your numbers! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
Obviously ignoring extra gem income is a simplification, but it's good enough to evaluate returns in regards to investment anyway.

Graeme:
Who says you won't cast search spells? You must remember that water magic is essentially useless other than for quickness, so it's not a particularly big loss to convert all your water gems to astral ones.
Oportunity costs. Mages & gems used to do one cannot be used to do the other. So you gotta choose.

It does only take about 35 turns to get to 100 clams once you have a decent income in other gems, as that's exactly what I've done with R'Lyeh.
Could you elaborate on this? % magic sites? map? # opponents? who are you putting 100 clams on?
And most important of all: where Atlantis & Ermor in the game?

What kind of game are you playing that you can spend 750-1000 gems in items with no immediate return, without your military power resenting from it? Really, if you had such a surplus why didn't you just go for the game & start killing opponents?

Re clams vs Voice of Tiamat:

No reason you can't do both. But once you've searched all your water provinces, there's no reason not to make clams. Opportunity costs of course. Even more important because when you delay clam forging you delay your Return On Investment from those clams.

I am not saying that clam-forging cannot work, rather that it applies to very specific game settings. It's obvious that strategies based on economy building are stronger the longer the game, tho I find some of the 'fixes' being suggested a bit radical.

Why don't you just play faster games? The same fun with less MM. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Graeme Dice

April 2nd, 2004, 06:11 PM

Originally posted by Wendigo:
Hey Peter, don't blame me for using your numbers! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
Obviously ignoring extra gem income is a simplification, but it's good enough to evaluate returns in regards to investment anyway.Not really. Any water gem income cuts the time to 100 (TO100) by a good 10 turns or so.

Graeme:
Oportunity costs. Mages & gems used to do one cannot be used to do the other. So you gotta choose.But you can do both. With construction 6 it only takes a water 1 mage to build a clam, and those mages aren't that hard to come by. What else would you do with a water 2 mage?

Could you elaborate on this? % magic sites? map? # opponents? who are you putting 100 clams on?
And most important of all: where Atlantis & Ermor in the game?50% magic sites, independents 6, Orania, 17 players. The clams go on star children who are researching.

What kind of game are you playing that you can spend 750-1000 gems in items with no immediate return, without your military power resenting from it? Really, if you had such a surplus why didn't you just go for the game & start killing opponents?I didn't have that kind of surplus. I had an income of about 5 water gems per turn and 10 astral per turn. From turn 20 when I started, I had my 100 clams by turn 55. Whenever I needed gems quickly I just skipped one turn of clam production and had an easy 20 to 50 pearls to work with for that turn. I'm not sinking 750-1000 gems into the clams. I'm sinking about 150 water gems (useless for anything else), and about 300 astral pearls from site income. The rest of the gems are produced by the clams themselves. There's really nothing else that's worthwhile for a nation like R'lyeh to do with its water gems.

Opportunity costs of course. Even more important because when you delay clam forging you delay your Return On Investment from those clams.You don't actually delay the ROI much at all, since any site based income makes the TO100 come 10's of turns faster.

I am not saying that clam-forging cannot work, rather that it applies to very specific game settings. It's obvious that strategies based on economy building are stronger the longer the game, tho I find some of the 'fixes' being suggested a bit radical.Building clams is an geometric growth with time. This is something that very few other strategies can produce.

Why don't you just play faster games? The same fun with less MM. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I wasn't aware that a game that's in turn ~60 was a long game.

Wendigo

April 2nd, 2004, 08:46 PM

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
But you can do both.
If you can do both then you are swimming in gems & have a comfortable lead.

I didn't have that kind of surplus. I had an income of about 5 water gems per turn and 10 astral per turn. From turn 20 when I started, I had my 100 clams by turn 55.
...
I'm not sinking 750-1000 gems into the clams. I'm sinking about 150 water gems (useless for anything else), and about 300 astral pearls from site income.
450 gems, 300 of them being astrals is still a substantial amount. Just checked your numbers & they only seem to match if those gems are used from the very start (ie, you start with 30 clams in turn 21-22), so you are likely to have spent much more than your estimation.

Your experience seems to differ also from mine. By turn 20 I am often already at war or planning to, and form then on do not stop fighting until the end of the game.

From an outsider PoV Atlantis seems to have been particularly passive in your game, same with Ermor. By turn 20+ a number of land nations should also have developed the means to at least be able to raid seas, if not hold on them.

The rest of the gems are produced by the clams themselves. There's really nothing else that's worthwhile for a nation like R'lyeh to do with its water gems.
Debatable. Early on Voice of Tiamat gives better returns that clams. Later on Murdering winter, Wolven winter + a number of good summons are also an option. And that without considering battlefield usage.

I am also far from convinced that spending 15-20 astrals to start getting the returns 10 turns later is a good move.

I wasn't aware that a game that's in turn ~60 was a long game. We obviously have different tastes on this.

edit- typo

[ April 02, 2004, 20:39: Message edited by: Wendigo ]

Stormbinder

April 2nd, 2004, 09:28 PM

Originally posted by Wendigo:
<blockquote>quote:<hr /> 20: Clams= 10 Income= 15 Waste= 0 Store= 18 --> Produced 1 clamsis not present in the game.

Even so, it's disputable that a clam strategy would be a better investment than an early casting of Voice of Tiamat on every sea: Sacrifice 10 gems for a 1 gem income, or 8 gems for a 2+ income?

<hr /></blockquote>You are missing the point Wendigo - Voice of Tiamat has hard max limit - the total number of your provinces. Clams don't. As Graeme said it's geometrical progression.

[ April 02, 2004, 19:34: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Wendigo

April 2nd, 2004, 09:53 PM

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
You are missing the point Wendigo - Voice of Tiamat has hard max limit - the total number of your provinces. Clams don't. As Graeme said it's geometrical progression. I am missing nothing.

It was argued that there was no better use for early water gems, so I just offered a better use.

As the game advances, it's less and less of an advantage to invest those waters in clams (as you will get less return, and there will be new options available).

You guys seem to defend that dumping huge amounts in clams is both necessary & compulsory to be able to compete. I have certainly won more than once without doing that, so I dispute this line of reasoning.

What I am saying is that this 'geometric growth' strategy only works in some very specific settings: big map, long game, water income, passive players, relative early invulnerability.

Nothing I have seen posted so far contradicts the above, and Graeme's example seems to rather confirm it. Additionally, forging clams is definitely not the only way to get 'free' gems/money/troops.

You might argue that it's a very cost effective one, and I would agree that it could indeed be some times, but I will tell you also that you maybe should consider putting some more care in the choice of settings for your next game, and be more agressive vs those hoarders.

[ April 02, 2004, 19:54: Message edited by: Wendigo ]

Stormbinder

April 2nd, 2004, 10:36 PM

Originally posted by Wendigo:
Originally posted by Stormbinder:
[qb] <blockquote>quote:<hr />You are missing the point Wendigo - Voice of Tiamat has hard max limit - the total number of your provinces. Clams don't. As Graeme said it's geometrical progression. I am missing nothing.

It was argued that there was no better use for early water gems, so I just offered a better use.

<hr /></blockquote>Nobody said you shouldn't look for water sites or use both Voices if you have sea provinces. Quite opposite - it was said here many times that you should do it, and than dump all your increased water income in clams, if you are using clam hoarding strategy. This way you'll be able to make even more clams and have larger gem income at the end of the same period, as long as this period is longer than 15-20 turns, depending on your particular settings.

And because you only have limited number of provinces and search spells for water are cheap, you can serach every province (except farm lands perhaps)with minimum water gem investment. After these provinces are searched you will concentrate on clams using your water and/or astral income, while using all other gem types for defense/attack/whatever.

If you have any water/astral income and water mages (and you obviosly do since you need them to produce clams) you can do it quite quickly.

You guys seem to defend that dumping huge amounts in clams is both necessary & compulsory to be able to compete. I have certainly won more than once without doing that, so I dispute this line of reasoning. Have you ever played medium or long games against good opponent who is using clam-hoarding strategy? Based upon your Posts I seriosly doubt it. Go and play it, and than come back and tell us about your victory. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

You have said yourslef earlier that you are playing short games and even went so far as to recommended all of us to do the same. Thanks, but some of us like different game types than you. Why do you feel that everybody should play the type of game that you are playing? Because in this particular game type the clam hoarding strategy is less valid? Or because you happened to dislike what you think of as "MM"? That's strange arguments in my opinion... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

Nothing I have seen posted so far contradicts the above, and Graeme's example seems to rather confirm it. Additionally, forging clams is definitely not the only way to get 'free' gems/money/troops. It's not about free gems or money or troops. It's about it in rapid geomethrical progression. The "avalanche" effect if you are familar with it. If you think you can point any other "geometrical progression" strategy avalaible in this game that is as efficient as clam hoarding please do it - I would be interested to know. I doubt that you can however.

[ April 02, 2004, 20:42: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Wendigo

April 2nd, 2004, 10:55 PM

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
Nobody said you shouldn't look for water sites or use both Voices if you have sea provinces. Quite opposite - it was said here many times that you should do it,
False. Nobody had mentioned Voice of Tiamat before I did so.

and than dump all your increased water income in clams, if you are using clam hoarding strategy. This way you'll be able to make even more clams and have larger gem income at the end of the same period, as long as this period is longer than 15-20 turns, depending on your particular settings.
Bul****. Graeme did not start making them until turn20. He did not start getting his investment back until well into turn40+.

Have you ever played medium or long games against good opponent who is using clam-hoarding strategy? Based upon your Posts I seriosly doubt it. Go and play it, and than come back and tell us about your victory. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif
I have been playing Dom & Dom II for over 3 years, all type of maps & games. Experience & tastes are 2 different things.

If you are interested in serious debate or a game, I am available, otherwise keep your winks for yourself.

Graeme Dice

April 2nd, 2004, 11:16 PM

Originally posted by Wendigo:
450 gems, 300 of them being astrals is still a substantial amount. Just checked your numbers & they only seem to match if those gems are used from the very start (ie, you start with 30 clams in turn 21-22), so you are likely to have spent much more than your estimation.A bit more, but there are very few uses for astral gems in the mid game, and your site searching can be performed more effectively by a group of multiple mages casting specifically targeted spells.

Your experience seems to differ also from mine. By turn 20 I am often already at war or planning to, and form then on do not stop fighting until the end of the game.I managed to create non-agression pacts and alliances with all my neighbours, and any exploratory attacks were met by a force of many Illithid's and fodder. Gateway and a good fortress/lab network allows R'Lyeh to move many troops very quickly.

From an outsider PoV Atlantis seems to have been particularly passive in your game, same with Ermor.Atlantis and I were allied from turn one, and Ermor was busy dealing with Atlantis and the other nations surrounding it.

Debatable. Early on Voice of Tiamat gives better returns that clams. Later on Murdering winter, Wolven winter + a number of good summons are also an option. And that without considering battlefield usage.Sure you can use murdering winter, but it requires one of your national heroes, or a very rare 3 water starspawn and construction 6 to cast it. By the time you have developed the ability to cast it regularly you could have built enough clams to support casting it once per turn.

I am also far from convinced that spending 15-20 astrals to start getting the returns 10 turns later is a good move.I actual consider the returns to come immediately, since it allows you to produce more astral items and such in any given turn, rather than worrying about keeping a stockpile of gems that can't be replenished quickly.

We obviously have different tastes on this.Sure, but to say that one should avoid playing games that go beyond 40 turns to keep them balanced is hardly a good thing.

Stormbinder

April 2nd, 2004, 11:18 PM

False. Nobody had mentioned Voice of Tiamat before I did so.
It was said that you should look for water gems to add to your intital water/astral income by both Graeme and Peter. Voice of Tiamat is just one posible option. Read Posts below.

Bul****. Graeme did not start making them until turn20. He did not start getting his investment back until well into turn40+. I am not in Graeme's game, so I can't comment for him. But I think the fact that he is winning his game while in war with all other 4 opponnents, according to Zap, speaks for itself. If you have any further questions or comments about Greame's game I suggest talk to him, not to me.

I have been playing Dom & Dom II for over 3 years, all type of maps & games. Experience & tastes are 2 different things. Good for you. Than you should be able to reilize that different people have differnt tastes when it comes to playing Dom2, and the fact that your tastes lies in some particualar settings doesn't mean that everybody should play it, or that any unbalances that manifest themself outside of these settings does not matter.

If you are interested in serious debate or a game, I am available I am. I asked you specific question that you haven't answered - you were refering to some other strategies that were as effective/abusive as clam hoarding. Can you name any?

[ April 02, 2004, 21:21: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Graeme Dice

April 2nd, 2004, 11:22 PM

Originally posted by Wendigo:
False. Nobody had mentioned Voice of Tiamat before I did so.Site searching was mentioned considerably before you mentioned it in this thread.

Bul****. Graeme did not start making them until turn20. He did not start getting his investment back until well into turn40+.I could, however, have stopped making them at any point if necessary, and immediately had more total gem income than what I would have had if I had used only provincial site searching and used my gems for various things.

Wendigo

April 2nd, 2004, 11:39 PM

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
and the fact that your tastes lies in some particualar settings doesn't mean that everybody should play it, or that any unbalances that manifest themself outside of these settings does not matter.
You are not going to get a game with nations perfectly balanced for both the long & short term. Some nations are better short term & some long term, same with designs.

I asked you specific question that you haven't answered - you were refering to some other strategies that were as effective/abusive as clam hoarding. Can you name any?Check this one for example for another 'economic strategy':
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=74;t=001570#000004

Others with a similar focus: Anything blood-slave related or concerning hoarding the Elemental kings/queens that produce free (and good!) troops-> It does not feed on itself as gem generators+ alchemy, but the troops provide gems+coin by giving you the provinces of your enemies.

In the end, you should not forget that the game is won & lost by winning & losing battles. The economy is not everything.

[ April 02, 2004, 21:40: Message edited by: Wendigo ]

April 2nd, 2004, 11:42 PM

I have nulled the advantage of Clams in Zenmod 82.3.

It takes out Wish. Now you must use normal ways to use your Astral Income either converting or using the pure Astrals.

Now if I could find a way to mod away the whining of people who build 'forts' then it would be 'balanced'.

Wendigo

April 2nd, 2004, 11:49 PM

I am not going to answer everything because it would take us nowhere, many of the arguments we are using are being circular & repetitive.

I will stick to my main point (yet uncontested):

Atlantis and I were allied from turn one, and Ermor was busy dealing with Atlantis and the other nations surrounding it.
This basically confirms my earlier Posts, you were an unchallenged water power..as previously noted:

"this 'geometric growth' strategy only works in some very specific settings: big map, long game, water income, passive players, relative early invulnerability."

Really, the unballance in this game seems to be the R'lyeh-Atlantis alliance, rather than the clams.

[ April 02, 2004, 21:51: Message edited by: Wendigo ]

Jasper

April 3rd, 2004, 12:05 AM

Originally posted by Wendigo:
You guys seem to defend that dumping huge amounts in clams is both necessary & compulsory to be able to compete. I have certainly won more than once without doing that, so I dispute this line of reasoning.Wendigo is one of the best players I know of, with a good grasp of the early game and a punishing grasp of the end game. I deeply regretted having invested water gems in pearls when losing to him. I lost many to murdering winter, and regretted not having spent them on something as simple as frost resist rings, or summons.

Frankly, you guys have _still_ done nothing to counter his points, and merely repeat your astute observation that Clams can pay off in the very long term, or resort to circular logic.

Stormbinder

April 3rd, 2004, 12:16 AM

Originally posted by Zen:
I have nulled the advantage of Clams in Zenmod 82.3.

It takes out Wish. Now you must use normal ways to use your Astral Income either converting or using the pure Astrals.

Hmm, interesting. Sounds like a good mod for MP. Care to post link to it? Also are there any other changes there in addition to the to that you have mentioned?

BTW if it's funny that you were arguing with me on the previous page of this thread, saying that clams are just fine the way they are now. Did you changed your opinion or just created the mod to satisfy the other side of the argument? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Whatever the case I appreciate your mod, thank you. To use it in MP should it be installed on every player's comp or only on the host?

April 3rd, 2004, 12:25 AM

I'm still of the opinion that Clams are of a very slight imbalance (only situational in one type of game or one type of player).

The reason I made the Mod is because I got tired of the lure of Wishing. It was for a very specific game (with Easy Magical Research) and we didn't want it to turn into a wishfest as that is very, very boring.

I don't have the file on me, but I'll be happy to Email it to anyone who wants it to try for some different starting settings of games.

Edit: I think that the reason Jasper and Pepe and a few others feel the way they do is they are of a similiar temperment (as I am) of aggression, I don't believe ethnic and religious cleansing should have alot of peace and at the very least vicious backstabbing to find the one true God. With that kind of temperment, having someone be able to sit by and make Clams unmolested until the game is more boring than fun is hard to imagine happening enough to be imbalanced.

[ April 02, 2004, 22:43: Message edited by: Zen ]

Graeme Dice

April 3rd, 2004, 12:47 AM

Originally posted by Wendigo:
Really, the unballance in this game seems to be the R'lyeh-Atlantis alliance, rather than the clams.Well, it's not like there's anything that R'Lyeh can spend water or astral gems on in great numbers that will help them in underwater battles against Atlantis. R'lyeh has virtually no capacity for casting ritual spells, and the number of underwater spells that cost either kind of gem is very low.

Stormbinder

April 3rd, 2004, 12:48 AM

Originally posted by Wendigo:
[QB] <blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Stormbinder:
and the fact that your tastes lies in some particualar settings doesn't mean that everybody should play it, or that any unbalances that manifest themself outside of these settings does not matter.

You are not going to get a game with nations perfectly balanced for both the long & short term.
It may be true, but it doesn't mean that there should be no attemts to improve the overall balance of the game, even considering the fact that the ideal balance can not be archived because it doesn't exist. In particular case with clams, you seem to admit that they are very unbalancing in long games. If this is so, and if they are as uneffective as you claim they are in short games, than why not make them harder to forge as suggested earlier?

Short games that you like to play will not be affected in any signifcant degree according to you, and medium and long game where clam hoarding can be a big issue will definetly be improved. I see it as clear win-win situation.

I asked you specific question that you haven't answered - you were refering to some other strategies that were as effective/abusive as clam hoarding. Can you name any?Check this one for example for another 'economic strategy':
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=74;t=001570#000004

Others with a similar focus: Anything blood-slave related or concerning hoarding the Elemental kings/queens that produce free (and good!) troops-> It does not feed on itself as gem generators+ alchemy, but the troops provide gems+coin by giving you the provinces of your enemies.
<hr /></blockquote>I think you've answered your own question. These strategies that you describe with blood and King/Queens summons are just what you said - some free troops. But because none of these tactics, as you put it, are "feeding on itself" it's very different in its nature from clam hoarding as I think you reilize yourself.

In mathematical terms Clam hoarding is geometric progression. What you descibing are ariphemetic progressions. As you probably know they are very different.

The argument that using thess strategies will give you more provinces is not really relivent. So would any other good strategy, that allow you to conquer enemy territory and by doing this would allow you to become more powerfull. These are just efficient strategies, some of the many available ones. But because they don't have "snowball" effect ("feeding on itself" in your own terms), which is the main attribute of geometric progression, they are not abusive, but instead are just good valid strategies that can be countered with others equaly good ones - and that's what this game is about after all.

In the end, you should not forget that the game is won & lost by winning & losing battles. The economy is not everything. True. But the economy matters a lot as well. And if one decent player have 10 times more economic resourses than the other, than he will very likely win even aginst expert opponent, not by superior tactic in battles but because of his economic might that will alow him to have 10 times more soldiers, summons, etc.

[ April 02, 2004, 22:57: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Stormbinder

April 3rd, 2004, 01:16 AM

Originally posted by Zen:

I don't have the file on me, but I'll be happy to Email it to anyone who wants it to try for some different starting settings of games.
Perhaps you could send it to Gandalf and he would be kind enough to host it on his brand new "Dom2minions" website? It's would be nice to have some link from where those who don't have it could download it before the start of the game. (if it has to be installed on every player's computer - is it?)

EDIT: NM, I misread your post (geting tired). I though you took out Wish _and_ Clams. My fault.

Guess I'll have to wait until Clams are fixed (hopefully) in the patch. Or if not than perhaps somebody would make a mod for it. Or maybe I should do it myslef - how difficult it can possibly be?!? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ April 03, 2004, 00:04: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Peter Ebbesen

April 3rd, 2004, 02:11 AM

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
I'll be damned! Thanks Peter. I knew it was scary, but I didn't realize it was _that_ scary. ;( Well, the scariness all depends on the other players letting the astral user getting away with it. It takes 20+1 rounds for astrals gems converted to water gems made into clams of pearls to pay off (14+1 rounds with a dwarven hammer, but then you need to pay for the hammer as well) so it takes a medium to long term game with a heavy investment in astral for a long, long, time to become truly scary.

I guess it is easier to get away with the more players there are, as it becomes possible to be overlooked for some time by not acting particularly aggressively and by being hard to attack. R'lyeh would probably be the best candidate for that with an "We're just a bunch of squid-faces on the bottom of the sea who want to live in peace" - while hoarding astral clams.

But even so, for my money, it is not all that abusable as it requires active collusion from your enemies for many dozens of turns in order to reach critical mass (unless you fight a large number of very good sites nearly). If your enemies hit you hard, it is going to be hard to avoid diverting a fair number of gems into various magical defenses and summonings.

Zapmeister

April 3rd, 2004, 02:19 AM

Well, the scariness all depends on the other players letting the astral user getting away with it.Not letting someone "get away" with something implies that there's some way of discovering that they're doing it. If the culprit sits on their astral stash until the mid to late game, who's to know ?

Peter Ebbesen

April 3rd, 2004, 02:29 AM

Originally posted by Zapmeister:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Well, the scariness all depends on the other players letting the astral user getting away with it.Not letting someone "get away" with something implies that there's some way of discovering that they're doing it. If the culprit sits on their astral stash until the mid to late game, who's to know ? <hr /></blockquote>No, it implies that there is a way of preventing the astral user from doing it, whether someone else knows about it or not. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

What I mean is that if everybody is leaving a player mostly alone for 40-60 turns or attacking him so little that he is not forced to use gems in his defense, they damn well deserve what happens to them after that. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Zapmeister

April 3rd, 2004, 02:34 AM

Yeah, it sounds OK in theory. But in practice, you're just one fish in a very big pond. You can't hassle everybody, and you have to look after your own interests at home. In the game I referred to earlier in this thread, going after R'lyeh any earlier would have been the end of me. You just don't have that kind of control over the game.

johan osterman

April 3rd, 2004, 02:34 AM

Originally posted by Stormbinder:

... But because they don't have "snowball" effect ("feeding on itself" in your own terms), which is the main attribute of geometric progression, they are not abusive, but instead are just good valid strategies that can be countered with others equaly good ones - and that's what this game is about after all.
Any effective investment of resources will have what you term a snowball effect. If you poor gems into summons these summons will allow you to conquer more provinces which will lead you to gain more available searchable provinces as well as income and resources, which in turn will allow you to earn more and summon more to conquer more which will let you ... etc.

LintMan

April 3rd, 2004, 02:41 AM

Originally posted by Zen:
Now if I could find a way to mod away the whining of people who build 'forts' then it would be 'balanced'. Just curious, this statement lost me. What's wrong with 'forts', and why are people whining about it?

Wendigo

April 3rd, 2004, 02:49 AM

20: Clams= 10 Income= 15 Waste= 0 Store= 18 --> Produced 1 clamsI am with Jasper. I am far from impressed by the above numbers, and those are a 'best possible' scenario for an astral power: Construction research for clam forging + 1 dwarven hammer already forged available both from turn3, which is basically impossible.

Even if it was, forfeiting the gem income from 20 turns (100 gems!) to get a +10 gem income is far from impressive. On standard settings I am pretty sure I could get a better income with half the investment by just casting a few search spells.

It seems to me that the players running into this are playing extremely big maps vs fairly passive opponents. The only nations I can imagine pulling this on more average settings are Atlantis & R'lyeh (thanks to the combination of early invulnerability & water income), and only if the other sea nation is not present in the game.

Even so, it's disputable that a clam strategy would be a better investment than an early casting of Voice of Tiamat on every sea: Sacrifice 10 gems for a 1 gem income, or 8 gems for a 2+ income?

As far as I am concerned, clam forging is a good use for water gems that have no immediate use, but I cannot imagine alchemying astrals for this.

[ April 02, 2004, 12:53: Message edited by: Wendigo ]

Stormbinder

April 3rd, 2004, 03:36 AM

Originally posted by johan osterman:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Stormbinder:

... But because they don't have "snowball" effect ("feeding on itself" in your own terms), which is the main attribute of geometric progression, they are not abusive, but instead are just good valid strategies that can be countered with others equaly good ones - and that's what this game is about after all.
Any effective investment of resources will have what you term a snowball effect. If you poor gems into summons these summons will allow you to conquer more provinces which will lead you to gain more available searchable provinces as well as income and resources, which in turn will allow you to earn more and summon more to conquer more which will let you ... etc. <hr /></blockquote>Thank you for reply Johan, I really appreciate it.

Certanly, I agree with your statement. After all
in any strategic game that I can think about once you begin to win territory/resourses from your opponent(s) and get stronger each new conquest is theoretically easer for you because now you have all your old resourses plus resourses of newly conquered
territory/country/province/colony/whatever. And it doesn't matter that much what tactic you are using while doing this because the result still the same.

But what I strongly feel makes clam-hoarding special case is the speed with witch it is happening. Once you have it really going you can double your gem investments very quickly (every 5-8 turns, depending on avaliablity of hammers/forge sites/mages). Look at Peter's two tables below for example, which describe the evolution of just _5_ astral gems invested into clams in the begining of the game. And of course in real game you often invest other water/astral gems into clams once you get additional income from searching your provinces, so it is even faster.

So the speed with wich the "snowball" grows once it gets rolling is much faster(mainly because it is geometrical progression) than with regular linear progression when you conquer enemy provinces. Also when you conquer province in your example you often suffer losses - and that slows your expansion. When you are siting in your castles mass-forging clams there are no losses, other than a bit of lost reseach, since it's just pure mathematic and doubling your investment every N turns.

But there is another factor that you and Kristofer are the only people quilified to comment about. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Please tell me this - when you designed this fantastic game, with all these different unique magic sites, as well as high-level spells for all magic schools - was it you intention that the Magic (gems) that power these spells would come mostly from these uniques sites of yours, from the territory that your Pretender God controls, perhaps with small addition of item-generated gems? Or your vision for the end-game was that by the end of medium and long games anywhere from 90-99% of your magic gems would be coming from hundreds and hundreds of clams siting in your magical treaury? Because as of now, as even opponents of clam-changes agree on this thread, more often than not it is 2nd situation by the end of many of long MP games.

I am sorry, I just can't help but feel that this is not the way it was intended to be by you, designers, since massive clam hoarding that person currently has to do to stay competitive against other clam-hoarders in long games feels so... boring. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Now if you tell me that everything is working the way it was intended in regards of Clams than I'll just shut up and will not bring this topic again on this Boards, I swear! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ April 03, 2004, 01:52: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Jasper

April 3rd, 2004, 01:05 PM

Originally posted by Zen:
I think that the reason Jasper and Pepe and a few others feel the way they do is they are of a similiar temperment (as I am) of aggression, I don't believe ethnic and religious cleansing should have alot of peace and at the very least vicious backstabbing to find the one true God. With that kind of temperment, having someone be able to sit by and make Clams unmolested until the game is more boring than fun is hard to imagine happening enough to be imbalanced. Not exactly... I don't think it's a style of play issue. I'm not particularily attached to either style of play, but just think that aggresive play in Dominions clearly dominates passive play.

I have yet to see a passive player do anything other than be annexed.

[ April 03, 2004, 11:17: Message edited by: Jasper ]

Jasper

April 3rd, 2004, 01:09 PM

Originally posted by johan osterman:
Any effective investment of resources will have what you term a snowball effect. If you poor gems into summons these summons will allow you to conquer more provinces which will lead you to gain more available searchable provinces as well as income and resources, which in turn will allow you to earn more and summon more to conquer more which will let you ... etc. This is exactly it. IMHO there are simply better forms of investment than Clams, e.g. seizing reseource generation from other players, especially as compared to having your resources stolen. Growth from conquest is exponential as well -- and far swifter than Clams.

IMHO the clam hoarder will have his resources stolen long before he can abuse geometric growth.

Graeme Dice

April 3rd, 2004, 07:54 PM

Originally posted by Jasper:
This is exactly it. IMHO there are simply better forms of investment than Clams, e.g. seizing reseource generation from other players, especially as compared to having your resources stolen. Growth from conquest is exponential as well -- and far swifter than Clams.No, growth from conquest is _not_ exponential, and neither is growth from clams. Growth from conquest is linear. Growth from clams is geometric. You capture a province, search it for magic sites, and once you've done that you've received all the benefits you are ever going to receive from that province. Your gem income from there does not double every few turns, and your gold income does not either. The clams on the other hand, double in the amount of gems they produce without requiring any expansion whatsoever.

IMHO the clam hoarder will have his resources stolen long before he can abuse geometric growth. Why don't you explain just how, exactly, making clams from astral and water gems hurts your ability to defend yourself? Please don't mention spells such as murdering winter, since it is useless even when combined with wolven winter in a heat dominion, and even more useless once the clam hoarder has put multiple domes over their capital.

Graeme Dice

April 3rd, 2004, 08:07 PM

Originally posted by Jasper:
I have yet to see a passive player do anything other than be annexed. Who is saying anthing about passive play? Water gems are not particularly useful for expansion, or attacking your enemy until the late game. You can always save those pearls that you get from sites to use for your defense, and only use those generated by clams to fuel more clams, and experience no effective reduction in magical power over the person who is not making clams. It adds a few turns to the time to 100 clams, but who says that you blindly go for 100 clams, and ignore your other needs? Even an astral income of 50 per turn from items is ridiculously large.

johan osterman

April 3rd, 2004, 09:55 PM

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
No, growth from conquest is _not_ exponential, and neither is growth from clams. Growth from conquest is linear. Growth from clams is geometric. You capture a province, search it for magic sites, and once you've done that you've received all the benefits you are ever going to receive from that province. Your gem income from there does not double every few turns, and your gold income does not either. The clams on the other hand, double in the amount of gems they produce without requiring any expansion whatsoever.
Greame: The income from one captured province will indeed linearly increase your money. The thing is that the gold you recieve from this province will in turn allow you to field bigger armies that will allow you to increase your speed of expansion, which will allow you to recruit even bigger armies etc. Thus making expansion by conquest a geometric growth as well. This is then somewhat hampered by upkeep and the need to replace losses in combat etc. But on the other hand the increased return on the investment from conquering a province is often faster than the 7-20 turn investment return from clam forging. A good province might well recompensate the losses of capturing it within the next turn or two.

I am not ruling out that clams are overpowered, just disputing that the dividends paid by clam hoarding is unique in having geometric growth compared to other forms of resource collection.

Stormbinder, just to clear things up, while I am responsible for some of what have went into dom 2, it is Johan Karlssson and Kristoffer (my brother) who are the principal creators and designers of dom 2.

Edit: Capturing provinces also potentionally denies them to other players. Possibly hemming their growth. Every clam, like every province, provides a linear increase in a resource, or potentionally several resources for a province, but since both clams and provinces can be used to acquire more of the same (provinces by allowing you to field more armies) they both alow for geometric growth, both snowballs both feed upon themselves. Clams however does not hit the roof in the way provinces does when territores come into short supply.

[ April 03, 2004, 20:03: Message edited by: johan osterman ]

Graeme Dice

April 3rd, 2004, 10:53 PM

Originally posted by johan osterman:
I am not ruling out that clams are overpowered, just disputing that the dividends paid by clam hoarding is unique in having geometric growth compared to other forms of resource collection.I'm not suggesting that they be removed entirely, or even have a hard cap placed on them. I'm just suggesting that perhaps something like horror marking the user (Say that the horrors are attracted to this source of magic), would be an effective limiter. With 5 people holding clams, you won't see too many horror attacks, and your losses will be small. With 50 holding clams, you will most likely see enough attacks by horrors to limit the growth potential.

Stormbinder

April 4th, 2004, 04:09 AM

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by johan osterman:
I am not ruling out that clams are overpowered, just disputing that the dividends paid by clam hoarding is unique in having geometric growth compared to other forms of resource collection.I'm not suggesting that they be removed entirely, or even have a hard cap placed on them. I'm just suggesting that perhaps something like horror marking the user (Say that the horrors are attracted to this source of magic), would be an effective limiter. With 5 people holding clams, you won't see too many horror attacks, and your losses will be small. With 50 holding clams, you will most likely see enough attacks by horrors to limit the growth potential. <hr /></blockquote>I am not 100% sure if horror-marking clam hoarders would be enough to limit clam-abuse. It'll all depends on average life expectancy of standart clam's owner, and I don't have numbers to make a qualified guess.

Personally I think it would be better to make Clams cost 20 water gems and require con 6, and make Fever Fetishes cost 10 fire gems and 5 death (same con6). But if for some reason High Powers (developers) disagree with such changes, than at least making clam owners horror-marked would definetly be a step in right direction.

Graeme Dice

April 4th, 2004, 04:22 AM

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
Personally I think it would be better to make Clams cost 20 water gems and require con 6, and make Fever Fetishes cost 10 fire gems and 5 death (same con6).Disease is a fire/nature effect (seven year fever), so that change doesn't make that much sense.

Stormbinder

April 4th, 2004, 04:27 AM

Originally posted by johan osterman:

I am not ruling out that clams are overpowered, just disputing that the dividends paid by clam hoarding is unique in having geometric growth compared to other forms of resource collection.

Stormbinder, just to clear things up, while I am responsible for some of what have went into dom 2, it is Johan Karlssson and Kristoffer (my brother) who are the principal creators and designers of dom 2.

<nod> Got it, thank you for clarification Johan.

I hope that KrissofferO or Johan Karlsson will check this thread again sooner or later and will post their opinion about this Clam-hoarding issue. I know that they both are very acive on this forum and extremely helpfull (more than any other game developer that I ever meet in fact, and this is not ***-kissing statement http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif ), as well as you Jason, so it'll probably happens sooner or later.

Also as I've said earlier I really would like to know if their design vision for the end of medium and long MP games included having 90-99% gem income coming from hundreds of Clams instead of magic sites. If it was by design, than IMHO we all should just drop this topic. If not (as I realy hope it is), than we may hope that they will fix it one way or another.

EDIT: Graeme - you are right of course, I meant to say 10 fire 5 nature. Also current ability for undead to hold fetishes without any bad side effects while producing firegems doesn't seem right to me, but this was mentioned by other people before.

[ April 04, 2004, 03:39: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Zapmeister

April 4th, 2004, 06:09 AM

Personally I think it would be better to make Clams cost 20 water gems and require con 6, and make Fever Fetishes cost 10 fire gems and 5 death (same con6).If there's ever agreement that there's a problem that needs fixing here, then I think that this particular fix would be overkill.

For a start, the problem is really clams leading to massive astral production leading to Wishes ending the game. So Fever Fetishes probably don't need fixing at all.

And if clams were 5 water 5 nature, that would probably fix them as well, since water/nature mages are harder to come by than water-2 mages, and nature gems have other uses that would tempt the potential clam-hoarder.

Stormbinder

April 4th, 2004, 10:49 AM

Originally posted by Zapmeister:

For a start, the problem is really clams leading to massive astral production leading to Wishes ending the game. I think chain-casting Wishes is just one of the possible use of hoards of clams in the end-game. Granted, it may very well be the most effective current use of huge astral income from clams (that's why Zen killed Wishes in his mod as I understand it), but I don't think elimination or changes to Wishes would solve the real problem of clams abuse. It may lessen the effects of its most-obvious sympthom, but the problem would still be there, since wishes are not the only thing you can do with your huge astral income from clams.

[ April 04, 2004, 09:52: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Taqwus

April 4th, 2004, 07:17 PM

Exponential clam growth strikes me as somewhat unlikely, because that requires a corresponding exponential growth in the number of water mages, and that's difficult to do unless you have an absolutely incredible amount of water gems coming in for Sea King's Court and can also deal with the exponentially growing maintenance cost. Not to mention that every mage forging clams is a mage that could be doing research or leading troops or so forth.

Graeme Dice

April 4th, 2004, 07:46 PM

Originally posted by Taqwus:
Exponential clam growth strikes me as somewhat unlikely, because that requires a corresponding exponential growth in the number of water mages, and that's difficult to do unless you have an absolutely incredible amount of water gems coming in for Sea King's Court and can also deal with the exponentially growing maintenance cost.If all you want is 100 clams, then you'll never need more than between 5-10 water 1 mages to make them once you can build water bracelets.

PvK

April 5th, 2004, 12:23 AM

Ok here's a suggestion:

Make Clams require Water-2, Astral-1, 10 Water and 5 Astral to forge.

This would slow the expansion, and require the forgers to have Astral magic as well, which is appropriate (since they create astral gems), and also harder to get the required forgers.

PvK

Stormbinder

April 5th, 2004, 12:45 AM

Originally posted by PvK:
Ok here's a suggestion:

Make Clams require Water-2, Astral-1, 10 Water and 5 Astral to forge.

This would slow the expansion, and require the forgers to have Astral magic as well, which is appropriate (since they create astral gems), and also harder to get the required forgers.

PvK That would work too.

Zapmeister

April 5th, 2004, 12:59 AM

I prefer my suggestion (nature-1 water-1) because it requires nature gems (not produced by the clams) and R'lyeh has water/astral mages straight out of the box.

mlepinski

April 5th, 2004, 01:10 AM

Originally posted by Zapmeister:
I prefer my suggestion (nature-1 water-1) because it requires nature gems (not produced by the clams) and R'lyeh has water/astral mages straight out of the box. I agree that Nature-1/Water-1 mages are much harder to come by than Water-2/Astral-1 mages. (In addition to Ry'lyeh, Atlantis also has Water-2/Astral-1 mages right out of the box).

- Matt Lepinski :->

Stormbinder

April 5th, 2004, 03:54 AM

Originally posted by mlepinski:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Zapmeister:
I prefer my suggestion (nature-1 water-1) because it requires nature gems (not produced by the clams) and R'lyeh has water/astral mages straight out of the box. I agree that Nature-1/Water-1 mages are much harder to come by than Water-2/Astral-1 mages. (In addition to Ry'lyeh, Atlantis also has Water-2/Astral-1 mages right out of the box).

- Matt Lepinski :-> <hr /></blockquote>Water/Nature perhaps makes more sense from thematic point of view. But if clams would be made along this elements than I think 10 water 5 nature would be much better, especially if clams will be left at con4.

As for hard to come by at mages capable of making them - I disagree. Any amazon priestess could make them since they have nature 1 water 1 magic pathes. They are extremely cheap at 100 gp, in addition to being sacred troops that halve their maintaence. Any present lvl 2 water mages would cost much more than that, so it would be a step backward in this regard of mainanence cost.

Amazon provinces are quite common forest type province. Besides nature 5 water 5 is too low anyway, IMHO clams should cost at least 15 gems total to slow its return of investment.

10 nature gems and 5 water would work better than 10 water 5 nature btw - this wat at least if the player is going to use cheap mages with patch enchansers to mass-produce clams he would have to pay 10 nature for wristle mace to raise nature level from 1 to 2, intead of paying just 5 for water braclet. (as in case with water 10 nature 5)

Also as it was mentioned nature gems are more valuble in general than water, tempting the player to spend it elsewhere.

[ April 05, 2004, 02:57: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Zapmeister

April 5th, 2004, 05:04 AM

Water/Nature perhaps makes more sense from thematic point of view. But if clams would be made along this elements than I think 10 water 5 nature would be much better, especially if clams will be left at con4.Clams and fetishes are both Con2, and there's little to be gained by raising either to Con4, IMHO, even if we agree that clams are out of balance.

Any amazon priestess could make them since they have nature 1 water 1 magic pathes... They are extremely cheap at 100 gp, in addition to being sacred troops that halve their maintaence...Amazon provinces are quite common forest type province. Besides nature 5 water 5 is too low anyway, IMHO clams should cost at least 15 gems total to slow its return of investment.Maintenance on the clam forgers is not really an issue, amazons are not common (at least not as common as national troops) and our objective is to slow the rate of clam production which can be done without increasing their total cost, IMHO.

Changing clams from water-2 to nature-1,water-1 is a small enough change to have some chance of being accepted by the devs, and the folks that think there's no problem to be fixed.

Stormbinder

April 5th, 2004, 05:30 AM

Originally posted by Zapmeister:

[QUOTE]Any amazon priestess could make them since they have nature 1 water 1 magic pathes... They are extremely cheap at 100 gp, in addition to being sacred troops that halve their maintaence...Amazon provinces are quite common forest type province. Besides nature 5 water 5 is too low anyway, IMHO clams should cost at least 15 gems total to slow its return of investment.
Maintenance on the clam forgers is not really an issue Granted, it's not the most important factor but it still should be taken into calculation to get the whole picture. Mages are expansive. If you use say, your 270 gp none sacred mage as lvl 2 water one, than maintance would cost you 18gp per turn for each clam-maker. These things tend to add up. While 100gp priestess would cost you 3.3gp per turn. That's quite a differnce, if you are thinking about many clam-makers working together.

, amazons are not common (at least not as common as national troops)Anything is not as common as your national troops since you can build them in any castle, so obviously you can't judje indep. province frequency by such criteria. However as far as idep province types concern amazons are pretty common in the forests. I usually end up with anywhere from 1 to 2, sometimes 3 amazon provinces in my games after initial expansion stage.

and our objective is to slow the rate of clam production which can be done without increasing their total cost, IMHO.I don't think that nature 5 water 5 would be an adequite solution. The solution that could fix overpowered clams problem without raising its cost - like seting max limit on number of clams per player, would require some changes to the code, and therefore is more likely to rejected by developers than simple small increase in gem cost.

[ April 05, 2004, 04:33: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Zapmeister

April 5th, 2004, 05:41 AM

Anything is not as common as your national troops since you can build them in any castle, so obviously you can't judje indep. province frequency by such criteria.Yes you can. We're trying to determine the availability of clam forgers. Atlantis and R'lyeh have national units that can forge water-2 clams. No-one has national troops that can forge water-1, nature-1 clams without a lucky random pick. That's the point.
The solution that could fix overpowered clams problem without raising its cost - like seting max limit on number of clams per player,But I'm not suggesting that. I'm saying that making them water-1,nature-1 is enough because of the reduced availability of forgers and the usefulness of nature gems for other purposes.

I'm also saying that anything more than that is overkill, and will never be accepted by the folks that don't even agree that clams are out of balance in the first place.

Stormbinder

April 5th, 2004, 06:03 AM

Anything is not as common as your national troops since you can build them in any castle, so obviously you can't judje indep. province frequency by such criteria. Yes you can. We're trying to determine the availability of clam forgers. Atlantis and R'lyeh have national units that can forge water-2 clams. First you are forgeting Jotunheim. Second - all I was saying is that is that amazons are quite common forest province, with mages that can be 5 times cheaper than your national water 2 mages, and capable of making clams that fits your suggestion for their gemcost (5W/5N). That's all.

The solution that could fix overpowered clams problem without raising its cost - like seting max limit on number of clams per player, But I'm not suggesting that. I'm saying that making them water-1,nature-1 is enough I know that. And like I said I disagee with that, for the reasons explained below.

[ April 05, 2004, 05:07: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

rabelais

April 5th, 2004, 06:08 AM

Speaking of the next patch... can someone tell me whether it has lockable research sliders?

The current system makes it impossible to obtain certain distributions. Since reductions in one get added to the smallest, and additions get pulled from the largest.

Drives me CRAZY!

Rabe the Unbalanced

Zapmeister

April 5th, 2004, 06:24 AM

First you are forgeting Jotunheim.Ah yes, the Skratti are blood-2, water-2 aren't they. I think Mictlan's Rain Priest does it too. But that adds weight to my argument.

Second - all I was saying is that is that amazons are quite common forest province, with mages that can be 5 times cheaper than your national water 2 magesBut you also agreed that maintenance wasn't a major issue. We're looking for factors that are not just relevant, but will make the difference between choosing a clam-hoarding strategy and not. Forger maintenance is not such an issue.

Add to this the fact that 2 gem types are required for nature-1,water-1 clams meaning that, in the case of R'lyeh and Atlantis for example, a nature gem supply must be found, and the pretender is probably the only unit that can find it.

I know that. And like I said I disagee with that, for the reasons explained below.So then, which of those reasons have I not addressed?

PrinzMegaherz

April 5th, 2004, 09:33 AM

I just wondered whether it would be possible to play games with stronger gods? Maybe a map slider you can use to vary the points each player gets to spend on god creation between 400 - 600 points or even more, just like the point bonus given to difficult AI.
What do you think about this?

Daynarr

April 5th, 2004, 12:00 PM

Originally posted by PrinzMegaherz:
I just wondered whether it would be possible to play games with stronger gods? Maybe a map slider you can use to vary the points each player gets to spend on god creation between 400 - 600 points or even more, just like the point bonus given to difficult AI.
What do you think about this? Actually, this isn't a bad idea.

Karacan

April 5th, 2004, 12:59 PM

There's actually a lot of nature-gem producing sites underwater, found with water and earth. For an atlantian pretender, finding a nature gem supply is an issue solved by turn 5 to 10. Unless the magic site frequency is set to abysmally low.

Cainehill

April 5th, 2004, 05:06 PM

Originally posted by Zapmeister:
Add to this the fact that 2 gem types are required for nature-1,water-1 clams meaning that, in the case of R'lyeh and Atlantis for example, a nature gem supply must be found, and the pretender is probably the only unit that can find it.
Untrue. I haven't played Atlantis or R'lyeh, but I often advance into the oceans (when they aren't being played). Even without searching, there's a lot of Kelp Forest nature sites in the oceans - in some games it's seemed like one in three aquatic provinces had one.

So, imo - the nature provinces would be easy to find for Atlantis or R'lyeh.

(I'm neutral on the Clam issue - haven't been in a game yet where they were 'abused'. It does seem like they should be in a "lesser artifact" class - limitted in quantities, perhaps each nation could have one or two. Like the magic salt mill that turned the oceans salty, things that produce things from nothing shouldn't be common.)

PvK

April 5th, 2004, 05:38 PM

Originally posted by Daynarr:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by PrinzMegaherz:
I just wondered whether it would be possible to play games with stronger gods? Maybe a map slider you can use to vary the points each player gets to spend on god creation between 400 - 600 points or even more, just like the point bonus given to difficult AI.
What do you think about this? Actually, this isn't a bad idea. <hr /></blockquote>Yes, good idea. It would address some qualms some people had about "I can never have enough points to try out X strategy".

As for the clams, how about this idea:

The clams generate astral pearls from the astral aether of the world, which there is only so much of each month. The clams of the world draw from this pool, at most one per month, but when there are more clams than the pool, only some of the clams grow pearls that month. Say the pool is 30 pearls per month. Someone could forge 30 clams, but would only get 30 pearls if no one else forged any. If other nations forged a total of 60 clams, they would get about 2/3 of the world's 30 pearls, and the 30-clam nation would get 1/3 (about 10 pearls). The 30-pearl pool could be more or less, and/or something that can be set in the map, an option, or perhaps best: based on the number of provinces in the map. Maybe it should simply be equal to the number of salt water provinces on the map! That would make good sense, set a nice low limit, and result in clams being a good investment at first, but not once people start over-producing clams.

PvK

Stormbinder

April 5th, 2004, 07:55 PM

First you are forgeting Jotunheim. Originally posted by Zapmeister:

Ah yes, the Skratti are blood-2, water-2 aren't they. Yes they are, plus one random pick.

But that adds weight to my argument.No, it doesn't. It just adds weight to the argument that current situation where clams cost 10 watergems has to be changed, and this is something that both of us agree about.

Second - all I was saying is that is that amazons are quite common forest province, with mages that can be 5 times cheaper than your national water 2 mages But you also agreed that maintenance wasn't a major issue. No, I never said that. I said that this is not "the most important factor" to claim issue, however it doesn't mean that clam-forgers cost and maintenance should not be seriolsly considered when looking into the big picture.

We're looking for factors that are not just relevant, but will make the difference between choosing a clam-hoarding strategy and not. Forger maintenance is not such an issue.
I think you seriously underestimate this fact Zapmeister. Here is some simple math:

Let's say you got amazon province on turn 5 - not unrealistic at all, especially if you are sending your scouts to check all nearby forests, as I always do. Let's say this is your only amazon province in the game, for the sake of the argument.

Now you can easely start producing 1 priestess per turn and do it every turn for as long as you own province (remeber, they cost only 100gp each and they are sacred). That means by the turn 40 (mid game) you have 35 nature1 water1 priestesses. That means, that if you have enough gem supplies (look at Peter's tables below) you can forge 35 clams every turn by now. And that's without any use of national mages.

Now let's say you clams still require water 2 as they do now, and you have to rely on your national mages to produce them. Take Skattis for axample, who are 250gp not-sacred mage, which is pretty average price as far as national mages go.

Now let's say you start producing them for the purpose of clam forging on turn 5 (as in previous example), and produce them every turn for 35 turns, until turn 40.

That's 35 national mages. their hiring cost would be 5250 gp more than the cost of 35 amazon priestesses. (250gp-150gp)x35. That's _a lot_ of money - you could build 12 Castles for it or 500 heavy infantry soldiers, et cetera. But that's not all. Using linear progression sum formula we can calculate maintanence cost for 35 mages up to turn 40. It is 10500 GP. The total maintance cost for the 35 amazon priestesses(from 1 to 35 on turn 40 from same example above) would be 2100 GP. The difference between our two cases in maintenance is (10500 - 2100)= 8400GP. So, together with difference in hiring costs (5250 GP) we are looking at total 13650GP (!) difference.

That's how much money the clam hording player will save from just one amazon province, if the calms would be made 5N and 5W, as you suggested. Now if you think that this would make clams less atractive, I suggest you to think again. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Now the reason why I've said that this is not the most important factor, is that there is another factor which is even more crytical to the clam abusing issue. That is the basic fact that any mechanism that allows you total return your gem invesments in few turns (anywhere from 5 to 7, or 10 in the worst case scenario, depending on availability of dwarven hammers and if you have found the forging bonus site). Half of the Posts below is discussing thus, so I am not going to repeat these arguments. Read Peter's Posts for example, if you want to see more numbers related to this topic.

Tricon

April 5th, 2004, 08:01 PM

Originally posted by PvK:

As for the clams, how about this idea:

The clams generate astral pearls from the astral aether of the world, which there is only so much of each month. The clams of the world draw from this pool, at most one per month, but when there are more clams than the pool, only some of the clams grow pearls that month. Say the pool is 30 pearls per month. Someone could forge 30 clams, but would only get 30 pearls if no one else forged any. If other nations forged a total of 60 clams, they would get about 2/3 of the world's 30 pearls, and the 30-clam nation would get 1/3 (about 10 pearls). The 30-pearl pool could be more or less, and/or something that can be set in the map, an option, or perhaps best: based on the number of provinces in the map. Maybe it should simply be equal to the number of salt water provinces on the map! That would make good sense, set a nice low limit, and result in clams being a good investment at first, but not once people start over-producing clams.

PvK Like this idea. Probably needs some ironing but sounds good and feasable.

Graeme Dice

April 5th, 2004, 08:21 PM

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
That means, that if you have enough gem supplies (look at Peter's tables below) you can forge 35 clams every turn by now. And that's without any use of national mages. There's no way that you will have built 700 clams by turn 35, which is what is required if you want to build 35 clams per turn. To get to 100 clams, you never need more than 5-7 mages, and that's only for the very Last turns of the progression.

Stormbinder

April 5th, 2004, 09:27 PM

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
There's no way that you will have built 700 clams by turn 35, which is what is required if you want to build 35 clams per turn. To get to 100 clams, you never need more than 5-7 mages, and that's only for the very Last turns of the progression. That's probably right, and I've said in my post that you'll use them for clam forging only as much as you have gems for them. But you would stlll likely to build 1 priestess each turn, if for no other reason than because they are such great and cheap reseachers, much better than almost all national mages, save few nations. (from cost/efficence point of view). So you just use whanever priestess are not forging clams for your reseach. And later, when your clam production will be catching up, you'll be switching more priestess to forging, leaving rest at reseach. At some point not too down the road (but later than turn 40, agreed) your claim production is bound to outrun your pristess production, since clams grow is geometrical and priestess can only be recruited one per turn. Than you'll have to start using your national ones, but up until than your pristess will take care of all your forging for you. However at that time you'll have such a massive gem income, than game is likely to be won anyway. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

You have to remeber that the discussion with Zap started that with him saying that since R'leh, and other nations have 2 water national mages available, than changing clams to nature 5 water 5 would solve clam-hording problem. I disagreed, saying that it would not, and in fact could be counterproductive in some cases. So you are actually adding weight to my argument, that priestesses, who could be relatively easy recruited from forest provinces with minimal luck and some scouting, will be more than enough to handle all your clams forging for you up to mid game at least, and at reduced cost.

[ April 05, 2004, 20:44: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Zapmeister

April 6th, 2004, 12:57 AM

At the moment, 4 nations have national mages that can forge clams. If they were nature-1,water-1, no-one would have national mages that could do it, but if jade amazons (not any old amazon will do) are found, then it can be done on a much lower maintenance bill.

At that point, I'm done with this topic. I fear, because there's been so much disagreement, that there's no hope of getting any fix at all. I was plugging for a smaller fix mostly because I thought it was the only proposal that had any chance of getting past the devs.

I guess we're gonna have to learn to live with clam-hoarders http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

licker

April 6th, 2004, 01:40 AM

Originally posted by Zapmeister:
At the moment, 4 nations have national mages that can forge clams. If they were nature-1,water-1, no-one would have national mages that could do it, but if jade amazons (not any old amazon will do) are found, then it can be done on a much lower maintenance bill.

At that point, I'm done with this topic. I fear, because there's been so much disagreement, that there's no hope of getting any fix at all. I was plugging for a smaller fix mostly because I thought it was the only proposal that had any chance of getting past the devs.

I guess we're gonna have to learn to live with clam-hoarders http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif Better check your themes before you start on with the 'noone' bit... then again who plays Miasma anyway? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Still this seems like a problem that is better addressed by the players (like using house rules?) than addressed by some kind of nerf. I fall firmly in the 'who cares' camp on this one http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Stormbinder

April 6th, 2004, 03:31 AM

Originally posted by Zapmeister:
I fear, because there's been so much disagreement, that there's no hope of getting any fix at all. I was plugging for a smaller fix mostly because I thought it was the only proposal that had any chance of getting past the devs.

I guess we're gonna have to learn to live with clam-hoarders http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif Well most of the disageement recently (on the Last page at lest) come from the issue what would be the best solution for the clam hoarding, but the posters in general tend to agree that the problem exist and require fixing. Personaly despite my personal opinion on this matter I would be very happy with practically any solution endorsed by developers, as long as it would make massive clam hoarding less attractive as it is now. Even if it wouldn't go as far as it as I would wanted it to, any step in right direction is much better than no steps.

Unfortunatly since I haven't seen any developers posting in this thread their opinion, and considering the fact that they are quite active on this forum in general, I can't help but think that they have already considered the matter and dicided that they are indiffernt toward this whole clam thing. But they don't want to post it since they know that some people feel strongly about clams, and being nice guys that they are they don't want to hurt other people feelings. That's pure specualtion on my part of course, since I can't speak for the developers. But if it is so than it is quite sad. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Graeme Dice

April 6th, 2004, 04:12 AM

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
Unfortunatly since I haven't seen any developers posting in this thread their opinion, and considering the fact that they are quite active on this forum in general, I can't help but think that they have already considered the matter and dicided that they are indiffernt toward this whole clam thing.They've already posted to this thread.

Stormbinder

April 6th, 2004, 04:49 AM

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Stormbinder:
Unfortunatly since I haven't seen any developers posting in this thread their opinion, and considering the fact that they are quite active on this forum in general, I can't help but think that they have already considered the matter and dicided that they are indiffernt toward this whole clam thing.They've already posted to this thread. <hr /></blockquote>You mean "Five bucks to the one who kills the hoarders http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif " line 6 pages ago?

[ April 06, 2004, 03:55: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Zapmeister

April 6th, 2004, 04:55 AM

What - "5 bucks to kill hoarders line?Not much, but enough to show that they think that this is a non-issue.

Chris Byler

April 6th, 2004, 05:22 AM

If clams are really that good, just raise them to Water 3. Doubling the up-front cost halves the return on investment, and in addition, it's harder for most nations to obtain the mages that can forge them (water bracelet is Con6).

However, there's another issue that I think is being overlooked. Graeme has said several times that "there is nothing else to do with your water gems besides forge clams" (or words to that effect) and therefore you are not hurting your military power by using water gems for clam forging.

In the opinion of the DomII playing community, is this statement correct? And if so, isn't THAT the real problem? Water was too weak in Dom I - everyone agreed on that. Is it still too weak? And if so, shouldn't it be strengthened?

On the battlefield: maybe water needs a new battlefield spell that would be as scary as Nether Darts or Orb Lightning? Are Falling Frost, Frozen Heart and Ice Strike not up to par? Or is the general idea of loading a mage with gems to use combat spells not worthwhile in a competitive environment? What about Water Elementals? They cost gems now (like all Dom2 elementals), but are still pretty effective for a modest gem cost. Do they need to be improved?

Rituals: Winter Wolves not measuring up? How about doubling the gem cost and number of wolves summoned (thus requiring fewer mages for the same wolf output)? Or how about a new water summon? Giant turtles perhaps (amphibious, size 6, very high protection, high strength bite attack)? Yetis (high hp, strength, size 3, moderate protection, cold resistant, claws+bite, you get a nice sized pack with each summon)? I think the change in seasonals was intended to move the game away from massing ethereal summons. But there's no reason that corporeal summons can't be strong and cheap enough to make a nice supplement to a conventional army.

Some have already suggested a ritual that makes all troops in a given province amphibious (either for a limited time, or permanently). Or how about a one-province Version of Thetis Blessing (spending extra gems to set the duration like Astral Window)? These could help water nations bring their aquatic troops onto land, or help a land nation invade the ocean.

Items: Water has some pretty good items already. One of the better low level weapons, Boots of Quickness, Water Bracelet, Rime Hauberk, Bottle of Living Water and of course the subject of this thread, Clam of Pearls.

Passive ability: Every path of magic gives its mages some ability. Nature gives supply, fire gives leadership and attack, earth gives protection, death gives fear and undead leadership, etc. Water gives water breathing to the mage and ONE unit per level of water magic. This is, frankly, pathetic, especially on a path that is already among the weakest in most other areas. Instead, why not let a water mage bring ALL his troops underwater? Most mages have low leadership anyway, but the few who have good leadership (or +leadership items) can lead whole armies underwater. Or at least raise it to 5-10 troops (or 10 total size of troops) per level of water magic. One unit per level is horrible, even if the unit is a Crusher or similar expensive summon (of a non-water path, I don't see any water unit that would be worth bringing).

Darryl

April 6th, 2004, 06:00 AM

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
However, there's another issue that I think is being overlooked. Graeme has said several times that "there is nothing else to do with your water gems besides forge clams"
This seems to me to be a major problem. As far as I can see (and I'm FAAAAR from an expert) there are 4 major uses for water:

1) Water breathing
2) Quickness ("Boots of" or the spell)
3) Clam of Pearls
4) Kill your own mages (Breath of Winter, and yes I'm still bitter)

Do people use water for anything else?

The kill your own mages one influences me to keep water mages out of battles unless I feel like micromanaging their position on the battlefield and who guards them and where the rest of the army...screw it, just have him forge something! Nothing I need right now? Just make some clams and don't kill anybody!

I guess I do summon Sea Trolls, and I have one in the Hall of Fame mostly due to falling frost. Of course when there is no enemy in range he proceeds to cast Breath of Winter thereby ensuring he can kill some of my people to stay in the HoF (I've taken care of the troops finally, but I'm still bitter...)

In the opinion of the DomII playing community, is this statement correct? And if so, isn't THAT the real problem?It seems to be pretty weak if you ask me.

On the battlefield: maybe water needs a new battlefield spell that would be as scary as Nether Darts or Orb Lightning? Are Falling Frost, Frozen Heart and Ice Strike not up to par?
Falling frost seems to be enough to get a commander into the HoF. And he's in a squad with titans, so that's not too shabby.

Some have already suggested a ritual that makes all troops in a given province amphibious (either for a limited time, or permanently). Or how about a one-province Version of Thetis Blessing (spending extra gems to set the duration like Astral Window)? These could help water nations bring their aquatic troops onto land, or help a land nation invade the ocean.
Kinda like that idea. I like Yetis too.

Passive ability: Every path of magic gives its mages some ability. Nature gives supply, fire gives leadership and attack, earth gives protection, death gives fear and undead leadership, etc. Water gives water breathing to the mage and ONE unit per level of water magic. This is, frankly, pathetic, especially on a path that is already among the weakest in most other areas. Instead, why not let a water mage bring ALL his troops underwater? Most mages have low leadership anyway, but the few who have good leadership (or +leadership items) can lead whole armies underwater. Or at least raise it to 5-10 troops (or 10 total size of troops) per level of water magic. One unit per level is horrible, even if the unit is a Crusher or similar expensive summon (of a non-water path, I don't see any water unit that would be worth bringing). I have to agree here. When I first found out that "bring some friends along" meant 1 per unit of magic my first thought was "useless" and I proceeded to plan on making items and completely ignoring any water magic on a mage for purposes of taking troops into water. Why not have it like nature: 5 people per level? Then that could actually be used, but a level 6 water mage (twice the level of "master" in the game) can take a whopping SIX people into the water? Wow. If you use any type of army this is negligible.

Zapmeister

April 6th, 2004, 06:05 AM

Do people use water for anything else?Ice Devils are often a good reason to put water on your pretender.

Jasper

April 6th, 2004, 07:05 AM

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
However, there's another issue that I think is being overlooked. Graeme has said several times that "there is nothing else to do with your water gems besides forge clams" (or words to that effect) and therefore you are not hurting your military power by using water gems for clam forging.Cleary an exaggeration IMHO. There are definitely usefull things to do with water gems, and not using them does have a cost. Sea Trolls, Water Queens, Frost Blades, Quickness boots, Quickening, Frozen Heart, and Murdering Winter are all effective. The contention that Murdering Winter isn't usefull borders on ludicrious IMHO.

In the opinion of the DomII playing community, is this statement correct? And if so, isn't THAT the real problem? Water was too weak in Dom I - everyone agreed on that. Is it still too weak? And if so, shouldn't it be strengthened?I definitely agree that water is the weakest path, although not by so much as I used to think.

I like the ideas you have for improving it, especially the new summons and passive abilities. Another way would be to lower the casting level of some existing spells, as one of the things really hampering water is the lack of usefull lower levels spells.

Graeme Dice

April 6th, 2004, 07:14 AM

Originally posted by Jasper:
Sea Trolls, Water Queens, Frost Blades, Quickness boots, Quickening, Frozen Heart, and Murdering Winter are all effective.

Sea trolls have a gold upkeep that will ruin your economy if you try and make a good sized army of them. Frozen heart is nice, but not useful at all against a sixth of the enemies you will face. Water elementals are also probably the weakest of the lot in a normal temperature dominion.

[QUOTE][QB]The contention that Murdering Winter isn't usefull borders on ludicrious IMHO.Murdering winter is not particularly useful. It requires you to cast several wolven winters in the same turn to do enough damage to kill even normal troops, and in a heat dominion this gets even worse. In heat 2 it will routinely only kill 10 troops out of over a hundred. It is also completely useless against Caelum, Jotunheim and Ermor.

Zapmeister

April 6th, 2004, 07:39 AM

Why do the magic paths need to be balanced? If water is seen to be weaker than the others, that doesn't mean it won't get used. If your national mages have water, and you get water gems, you'll obviously use them for one of the uses that have been listed in this thread.

The problem arises if one of those uses (clams) is clearly better than the others, and leads to an arguably straightforward, difficult-to-stop winning strategy (clams -> astrals -> wishes).

I believe that this is the case (let's not argue it again) and while I would prefer the nature-1,water-1 solution because I think it would supply the necessary balance, and keep the item on a par with fever fetishes cost-wise, I would also be happy with the water-3 solution.

The main hurdle at this point, though, is that there's no consensus that clams are broken. Jasper, Wendigo and the devs constitute a powerful lobby, by anyone's reckoning.

Jasper

April 6th, 2004, 07:39 AM

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
No, growth from conquest is _not_ exponential, and neither is growth from clams. Growth from conquest is linear. Growth from clams is geometric. You capture a province, search it for magic sites, and once you've done that you've received all the benefits you are ever going to receive from that province. Your gem income from there does not double every few turns, and your gold income does not either. The clams on the other hand, double in the amount of gems they produce without requiring any expansion whatsoever.You're right, geometric is definitely the right word, not exponential. However, conquest growth is every bit as geometric as clam investment: just as you can reinvest a clam's astrals into clams, so can you reinvest conquered gold income into conquest. True, there is a ceiling for returns from conquest, but as this comes when you've conquered the _entire_ map IMHO it can be safely ignored.

Why don't you explain just how, exactly, making clams from astral and water gems hurts your ability to defend yourself? Please don't mention spells such as murdering winter, since it is useless even when combined with wolven winter in a heat dominion, and even more useless once the clam hoarder has put multiple domes over their capital. Simple: spending your gems on water summons is effective, and not doing so will give you a weaker army. Researching Construction right off is a very real cost as well, as typically other paths are more usefull for expansion. Similarily, Astral gems have uses better than losing half of them to alchemy in order to make more Astrals in the distant future.

Also, in my experience Murdering Winter is quite effective; one can always find or make a cold dominion in which to use it. Domes are a very limited defense against it, and aren't limited to clam hoarders anyway.

Honestly, I've tried the Clam strategy, and found it just too slow -- even on a fairly small scale, when I defintely had use for Astrals and had no immediate use for Water gems. I would have done better if I had saved them and either forged Frost Blades or summoned Sea Trolls/Water Queens.

Yes, Clams kick *** if you can count on everyone leaving you peacefully alone for 40 turns, and nobody else conquering much. I haven't yet seen this happen in Dominions, but I have seen games that were effectively decided by 40 turns.

The biggest advantage I see from Clams is that they let you have some secret growth (assuming statistics turned off) without the diplomatic problems that can come with conquest. They're also a good deal if you're planning to transmute water gems to astrals anyway.

Jasper

April 6th, 2004, 07:57 AM

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
Murdering winter is not particularly useful. It requires you to cast several wolven winters in the same turn to do enough damage to kill even normal troops, and in a heat dominion this gets even worse. In heat 2 it will routinely only kill 10 troops out of over a hundred. It is also completely useless against Caelum, Jotunheim and Ermor. You're the first person I've heard say this, although I've heard quite a few chime in (although not I) thinking Murdering Winter is broken... IMHO the burden clearly rests on your shoulders to show that Murdering Winter is weak. Your argument above rests on exactly the wrong context to use Murdering Winter, and so isn't very convincing.

Whether it works in heat 2 or not is moot, as even if it were only usefull in one's own cold dominion it would still be powerfull. Domes offer limited protection because they're not mobile, and in practice heat dominion similarily isn't a practical defense. And this is without taking into account that one can indeed enforce cold dominion with Wolven Winter (which is usefull in it's own right), or the tactic of blowing through domes with cheap rituals.

[ April 06, 2004, 07:03: Message edited by: Jasper ]

Jasper

April 6th, 2004, 08:07 AM

Originally posted by Zapmeister:
Why do the magic paths need to be balanced? If water is seen to be weaker than the others, that doesn't mean it won't get used. If your national mages have water, and you get water gems, you'll obviously use them for one of the uses that have been listed in this thread.It's true that all the paths don't need to be balanced, as you could balance nations with water magic in other ways (e.g. I wouldn't call Atlantis, R'lyeh, or Caelum weak).

However, IMHO the game would be more enjoyable if they were more balanced. I also think it wouldn't take much change to make water more interesting at lower levels of research, and so this would be an easy way to improve the game. As it stands the only reason I can see to take water on anything other than a Rainbow pretender is for the nice Water 9 blessing.

Nagot Gick Fel

April 6th, 2004, 08:49 AM

Originally posted by Jasper:
As it stands the only reason I can see to take water on anything other than a Rainbow pretender is for the nice Water 9 blessing.I take water 2-3 on my combat pretenders quite often.

Yossar

April 6th, 2004, 10:47 AM

Water is great on pretenders for:

1) Quickness, one of the best combat spells in the game

2) To mix with blood for easy access to ice devils.

Breath of winter is really good for taking independents too.

If you're going to be doing any fighting with your pretender, a few points in water is never a waste.

Jasper

April 6th, 2004, 10:48 AM

I used to do that a bit as well, but found I got better battle results out of Fire, Earth, Air, or Astral. Mostly because Water's main benefit to a combat pretender is quickness, which can be easily received from Quickness Boots. Being able to go underwater is nice too (unless R'lyeh, Atlantis, or Ermor or playing), but this too is available through Construction.

Nagot Gick Fel

April 6th, 2004, 11:21 AM

Originally posted by Jasper:
I used to do that a bit as well, but found I got better battle results out of Fire, Earth, Air, or Astral. Mostly because Water's main benefit to a combat pretender is quickness, which can be easily received from Quickness Boots.Many pretenders haven't the required appendages to put boots on.

For battle magic, my own Favorites paths are Water, Earth, Death. With Air and Nature as outsiders.

Stormbinder

April 6th, 2004, 11:29 AM

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Jasper:
I used to do that a bit as well, but found I got better battle results out of Fire, Earth, Air, or Astral. Mostly because Water's main benefit to a combat pretender is quickness, which can be easily received from Quickness Boots.Many pretenders haven't the required appendages to put boots on.

For battle magic, my own Favorites paths are Water, Earth, Death. With Air and Nature as outsiders. <hr /></blockquote>I like air, especailly air 2 - I often take it of my SC pretenders. Mistform+mirror is quite efficint combo.

[ April 06, 2004, 10:32: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

PhilD

April 6th, 2004, 11:30 AM

Originally posted by Jasper:
You're right, geometric is definitely the right word, not exponential.
I honestly fail to see the difference between "geometric" and "exponential" in this context. They're exactly the same: a constant amount of additional resources (time, or gems, or whatever) brings a constant multiplier to the total value.

Here, the growth is exponential (or geometric) with respect to time, because each 20 clams (or 14, if you have the Dwarven Hammers) generate enough gems each turn to make one more clam: your clam number, just from the clam output, will double every 15-16 turns.

I just computed progression lists, both assuming no normal gem input:

If you start on turn 0 with 20 clams, no gems, and convert each 20 pearls into one clam, you can start turn 16 with 40 clams and 39 pearls; you will need a second forger for the first time on turn 8.

If you start turn 0 with 14 clams, no gems, and a hammer, you will start turn 12 with 28 clams and 34 pearls, assuming you have the second hammer by turn 7. By turn 16, you will have 36 clams and 46 pearls, now needing a third hammer and forger.

Of course, the need for gold (upkeep and cost of recruiting the forgers and clam-bearers) will increase at the same speed. You can alchemize your pearls to pay for it, but it will significantly slow down your doubling rate.

I don't know how efficient this really is; I've never tried very hard to make it work.

Kristoffer O

April 6th, 2004, 11:54 AM

Originally posted by Zapmeister:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />What - "5 bucks to kill hoarders line?Not much, but enough to show that they think that this is a non-issue. <hr /></blockquote>No, it is not a non-issue.

As shown in this thread there is no consensus on the clam matter. Some people have a problem, some don't.

I havn't decided my own opinion yet.

My brother came up with the idea that clam hoarding is mostly a blitz problem. In quick paced games it is easier to get left alone and it is easier to get away with less than optimal use of resources.

In PBEM games you ponder your turn for hours, when at work and when sleeping. In this kind of game clam hoarders are probably less likely to succeed.

We didn't intend to make the game a build-up-wish-win-game. We didn't imagine MP games would Last until wish was researched (slight exaggeration, but not far from the truth). High level spells are mostly there for the SP community and to hasten the end of long Lasting MP games.

Research cost can and should be altered in large games.

Jasper

April 6th, 2004, 12:29 PM

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Jasper:
I used to do that a bit as well, but found I got better battle results out of Fire, Earth, Air, or Astral. Mostly because Water's main benefit to a combat pretender is quickness, which can be easily received from Quickness Boots.Many pretenders haven't the required appendages to put boots on.

For battle magic, my own Favorites paths are Water, Earth, Death. With Air and Nature as outsiders. <hr /></blockquote>True. I guess I'm biased as I generally choose those that can use boots (although that's most pretenders). Being able to get most of the benefit from a path of magic for a single item slot is pretty nice.

What do you like about Death on a Combat Pretender? The fear effect, or some spell combination? I've always thought of death mainly as support magic, with only Soul Vortex ever standing out for close combat use.

Jasper

April 6th, 2004, 12:33 PM

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
My brother came up with the idea that clam hoarding is mostly a blitz problem. In quick paced games it is easier to get left alone and it is easier to get away with less than optimal use of resources.

In PBEM games you ponder your turn for hours, when at work and when sleeping. In this kind of game clam hoarders are probably less likely to succeed.Interesting point. I typically don't play blitz games, excepting the first 10 turns or so. Even then I prefer slow enough play to allow diplomacy.

Do those who think Clams are broken play mostly blitz games?

Jasper

April 6th, 2004, 12:39 PM

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
We didn't intend to make the game a build-up-wish-win-game. We didn't imagine MP games would Last until wish was researched (slight exaggeration, but not far from the truth). High level spells are mostly there for the SP community and to hasten the end of long Lasting MP games.Most of the Dom 1 games I played saw level 9 spells in action roughly turn 40-50, IIRC. I haven't played enough with Dom 2's reduced income to have a good feel for it's research pace, but I'd be surprised if it was more than 5-10 turns behind.

Kristoffer O

April 6th, 2004, 12:43 PM

Originally posted by Jasper:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
My brother came up with the idea that clam hoarding is mostly a blitz problem. In quick paced games it is easier to get left alone and it is easier to get away with less than optimal use of resources.

In PBEM games you ponder your turn for hours, when at work and when sleeping. In this kind of game clam hoarders are probably less likely to succeed.Interesting point. I typically don't play blitz games, excepting the first 10 turns or so. Even then I prefer slow enough play to allow diplomacy.

Do those who think Clams are broken play mostly blitz games? <hr /></blockquote>Johan had a discussion on the matter with the 'blitz-finns' on IRC. They were the first ones to bring the matter to our attention. I have only heard blitzers complain, but that might be a misconception. I very rarely play blitzes.

Kristoffer O

April 6th, 2004, 12:52 PM

Originally posted by Jasper:
Most of the Dom 1 games I played saw level 9 spells in action roughly turn 40-50, IIRC. I haven't played enough with Dom 2's reduced income to have a good feel for it's research pace, but I'd be surprised if it was more than 5-10 turns behind. Yes. It was an exaggeration. But at turn 50 the game might well be decided, at least for a handful of nations.

All recent MP games I have been in have had victory conditions set. Either by VP or dominion. They didn't Last very long (20-60 turns).

I think VP's is a good workaround on the clam hoarding. Let him hoard while I grab these VP sites. Battles for VP's will change the goals of the players and the way the game is played.

Nagot Gick Fel

April 6th, 2004, 02:06 PM

Originally posted by Jasper:
What do you like about Death on a Combat Pretender? The fear effect, or some spell combination? I've always thought of death mainly as support magic, with only Soul Vortex ever standing out for close combat use. Good guess. I take Death for Soul Vortex, the fear aura is mainly a bonus. One of the biggest threats (if not the biggest) that even the toughest supercombattants have to deal with is fatigue, and Quickness only makes this concern worse. But with Soul Vortex on, this is no more an issue (well, as long as you face "leechable" enemies). This makes Water+Death (or more accurately, Quickness+Death) a fearsome combo IMO.

And, BTW, a bit of death magic makes your pretender more resistant to Decay. Although pretenders easily resist it, this spell is so cheap and easy to cast it shouldn't be underestimated if you send your god in hand-to-hand combat every other month. Same concern later in the game with Disintegrate. Last night I tested a Wyrm with Water 2 (Quickness, BoW), Earth 3 (prot 30, Iron Will) and Death 4 (Soul Vortex, resist death spells +2) and I can only say: it rocks. I'll have to try something similar on a Manticore soon.

Jasper

April 6th, 2004, 02:33 PM

I can see how the synergy would be nice, although that seems like a really expensive Wyrm. I have this image of your Wyrm with 2 Starshine Skullcaps , plus an anti-magic ring and a lightning ring on it's tail...

Alot rides on how much the tactical AI likes to cast Soul Vortex after scripted orders run out -- I take it from your sucess that it casts it frequently?

I would still fear getting trumped by someone else's combat pretender, as by the time you can put Soul Vortex into action you're potentially facing combatants who will destroy such a Wyrm, e.g. the classic Arcoscephale Nataraja. Still, imagine this would work with a Prince of Death as well.

The bit about extra resistance against Decay is new to me. Do all the paths work that way, or it just Death?

Nagot Gick Fel

April 6th, 2004, 03:19 PM

Originally posted by Jasper:
I can see how the synergy would be nice, although that seems like a really expensive Wyrm. I have this image of your Wyrm with 2 Starshine Skullcaps , plus an anti-magic ring and a lightning ring on it's tail...I tested with Midgard, so the 2nd cap was actually a Spirit Helm. And although expensive it's quite affordable. And more importantly, it was good fun to play with. Especially with a nation like Midgard. It wouldn't suit Ulm so well.

Alot rides on how much the tactical AI likes to cast Soul Vortex after scripted orders run out -- I take it from your sucess that it casts it frequently?I prefer to leave no room for randomness when scripting SCs -> buff x 5, attack.

I would still fear getting trumped by someone else's combat pretender, as by the time you can put Soul Vortex into action you're potentially facing combatants who will destroy such a Wyrm, e.g. the classic Arcoscephale Nataraja.I'm aware of this. I controlled 2 other nations in this test, and I can confirm a well decked-out Nataraja usually wins 1-on-1. Yet the Wyrm was very impressive in most scenarios and did some truly awesome job.

The bit about extra resistance against Decay is new to me. Do all the paths work that way, or it just Death? Not only death - Astral magic protects vs Soul Slay, Nature magic protects vs Charm, etc. You get +1 bonus for every 2 levels in the relevant path.

Stormbinder

April 6th, 2004, 04:52 PM

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
All recent MP games I have been in have had victory conditions set. Either by VP or dominion. They didn't Last very long (20-60 turns).

I think VP's is a good workaround on the clam hoarding. Let him hoard while I grab these VP sites. Battles for VP's will change the goals of the players and the way the game is played. I dont see a need to "fix" every way of winning the game as long as its not an automatic obvious choice. It kills a game for me to discover that there is strategy which will always win.

Which leaves me still undecided on this subject. On the one hand, game settings can make it not such a major deal which makes it not a major fix need IMHO. On the other hand it sounds as though its killer enough to make one type of games in Dom2, a rather popular type of games, to be less chosen or a fairly easy win. So it sounds like some sort of change might be good. <hr /></blockquote>That's exactly my point.

Kristoffer is right, it is clear that some people do not have problem with clams, and some people do. I think it is mostly due to the different types of games people like to play (plus some of the people who say that they don't have problem with the clams perhaps just haven't meet their first dedicated clam-hoarder in thier game yet. But still mostly it is due to different game types).

But if clams would be changed by making them a bit harder to make (like 10 water 5 nature, or one of the many other suggestions on this thread), than the first group of people would not be affected much. But for the 2nd group of people, who liek to play differnt game types and for whom clams are a big issue, this type of fix would be extremely beneficial.

And btw, I mostly play not-blitz games, and in some of them (usually in long and some medium ones) clam abuse is a real game spoiler. So from my experience it is definetly not blitz-only problem. Although there is certanly some truth in the argument that in Blitz game clam hoarder could be easer to overlook. Unfotunatly with graphs disabled (as most people play their MP) there is no way of knowing if the person is hording the clams or not. And killing every nation with astral and water income in the begining of the game is not a good answer to clam-abusing strategy.

AhhhFresh

April 6th, 2004, 04:53 PM

Not only death - Astral magic protects vs Soul Slay, Nature magic protects vs Charm, etc. You get +1 bonus for every 2 levels in the relevant path.empahsis mine

Presumably that Astral bonus applies to paralyze resistance as well?

That would explain why my astrally strong Void Lord in an MP game was able to wipe out an Arco army that had several mages spamming paralyze and soul slays...

I'm curious as to what exactly happened (I thought he was toast), but the replay bug... c'est la vie.

Peter Ebbesen

April 6th, 2004, 05:19 PM

Originally posted by Stormbinder:

But if clams would be changed by making them a bit harder to make (like 10 water 5 nature, or one of the many other suggestions on this thread), than the first group of people would not be affected much. But for the 2nd group of people, who liek to play differnt game types and for whom clams are a big issue, this type of fix would be extremely beneficial.Except that this is not, as you suggest, making astral clams "a bit harder" to make - it is making them much, much, harder to make for most nations due to lacking paths and increasing their cost by 50% - and making them take 7.5/15/30 (depends on how you count) rounds rather than 5/10/20 to pay off (sans dwarven hammer). In such a situation they would not really be worth making except if you were basing your strategy around them and the acquisition on WWN mages, rather than the situation now where they can be used (but not necessarily abused) by players for whom they are not the focus of the playing strategy.

I dislike the idea that the "solution" to what I perceive as a playing-style issue (players not attacking each other ruthlessly enough allowing nations to allocate resources to go clam-crazy with dire results in very long games) should be to make the clams all but useless in general.

Kelan

April 6th, 2004, 05:53 PM

Perhaps something as simple as removing the ability to alchemize astral gems to water gems could work, or increasing the ratio to 4 or 5 to 1 or something.

This would allow people to still create clams with their natural water gem income, and help curb the abuse of hoarding clams in the ways explained here.

Teraswaerto

April 6th, 2004, 06:09 PM

Limiting the amount of Clams that can exist in the world at the same time would stop excessive hoarding while still leaving Clams useful.

Peter Ebbesen

April 6th, 2004, 06:21 PM

Originally posted by Teraswaerto:
Limiting the amount of Clams that can exist in the world at the same time would stop excessive hoarding while still leaving Clams useful. No, it would merely impose an artificial restraint causing people to race for clams before somebody else cornered the market on a scarce resource. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Teraswaerto

April 6th, 2004, 06:38 PM

What's "artificial" in this context? If the limit was high enough it wouldn't be an issue unless someone was attempting the kind of hoarding that makes Clams problematic.

atul

April 6th, 2004, 07:39 PM

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
Unfotunatly with graphs disabled (as most people play their MP) there is no way of knowing if the person is hording the clams or not.(uh-oh, more water into mill, but...) You sure the gems from clams or fewer fetishes shows on graphs? I'm in a MP where I've got a moderate amount of clams and the main benefit imho has been that income from them hasn't appeared in the graphs, which are on for some reason. Same as your blood income, as it doesn't go directly to the treasury but to individual commanders, it doesn't show.

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
And killing every nation with astral and water income in the begining of the game is not a good answer to clam-abusing strategy. I thought the early killing of every nation heavy on astral was one of the main points of long-term survival, clams or no clams... ;p

AhhhFresh

April 6th, 2004, 08:12 PM

It all comes down to Wish.

Clam hoarding to the extent that people seem to be concerned about has a huge oppurtunity (as well as material) cost.

The only way that it makes sense in a strategic sense is if you are racing to chain cast wish... otherwise the impact is not significant enough to justify the cost.

Without wish as the light at the end of tunnel, I don't think there is anyway that a person solely focused on getting 100 clams by turn 70 or whatever is going to win a competative MP game. If they can get away with it, then they were already gonna win... and could have won sooner if they would have refoucsed the materials dedicated to clam forging to research/casting more immediately useful rituals.

Graeme Dice

April 6th, 2004, 08:50 PM

Originally posted by AhhhFresh:
Without wish as the light at the end of tunnel, I don't think there is anyway that a person solely focused on getting 100 clams by turn 70 or whatever is going to win a competative MP game.It's not turn 70, it's turn 60 or sooner. Most likely by turn 40 if the person has good water income.

Like I've already said, there's really no use for water gems. You don't need dozens of quickness boots if your mages already have water magic, murdering winter is useful, but only against a limited subset of your opponent's armies, and the water summons are fairly pathetic. Sea trolls have horrendous attack and defense stats. Now your astral gems on the other hand are going to be useful to you, but by spending only your water gems and those astral gems from the clams, you will have built your 100 clams by turn 38 of the progression. That means that you've given up 380 water gems, but it will have more than paid for itself just 8 turns later.

AhhhFresh

April 6th, 2004, 09:12 PM

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by AhhhFresh:
Without wish as the light at the end of tunnel, I don't think there is anyway that a person solely focused on getting 100 clams by turn 70 or whatever is going to win a competative MP game.It's not turn 70, it's turn 60 or sooner. Most likely by turn 40 if the person has good water income.

Like I've already said, there's really no use for water gems. You don't need dozens of quickness boots if your mages already have water magic, murdering winter is useful, but only against a limited subset of your opponent's armies, and the water summons are fairly pathetic. Sea trolls have horrendous attack and defense stats. Now your astral gems on the other hand are going to be useful to you, but by spending only your water gems and those astral gems from the clams, you will have built your 100 clams by turn 38 of the progression. That means that you've given up 380 water gems, but it will have more than paid for itself just 8 turns later. <hr /></blockquote>But the gems are only a small aspect of the total cost of clam hoarding. I agree that water gems are of limited utility.

For R'lyeh, you're talking about a 280 gp spellcaster(who needs a random to land in water) for each dedicated clam forger... that upkeep cost (which is not small), as well as the fact that they're not researching, or using that Astral 3-4 to win battles or gatewaying your troops to the front lines or whatever...

If you're not using the astral income to cast/forge astral things (ie Wish)... then cut it in half, which doesn't seem so impressive to me.

Especially when you consider the research you've lost in those 40 turns...

EDIT: Just pointing out that in this case, we're talking about sacrificing ~1000 RP's over 38 turns for these 100 clams. And during these 38 turns, the clams are providing no benefit other than begetting more clams.

[ April 06, 2004, 20:28: Message edited by: AhhhFresh ]

Daynarr

April 6th, 2004, 09:16 PM

How about just doubling the cost of clams? That way it will take longer to hoard clams, which makes lots of difference in MP.

Daynarr

April 6th, 2004, 09:26 PM

Originally posted by AhhhFresh:
[QUOTE]
Especially when you consider the research you've lost in those 40 turns... True, Wish has to be researched.
I really wonder how can somebody make enough mages to produce clams, produce army that will conquer more land to get more water gem income, cover your borders so someone just doesn't walk over you (it shows in graphs if you have small army), get mages to search those provinces to find magic sites, research all the way to level 4 construction and level 9 alteration and do it all in 40 turns.
I'm sorry to say it but I just don't believe that is possible. It may be possible to get such gem income but you research will be practically 0 and you will have no army to speak off after first 40 turns.

AhhhFresh

April 6th, 2004, 09:47 PM

Originally posted by Daynarr:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by AhhhFresh:
[QUOTE]
Especially when you consider the research you've lost in those 40 turns... True, Wish has to be researched.
I really wonder how can somebody make enough mages to produce clams, produce army that will conquer more land to get more water gem income, cover your borders so someone just doesn't walk over you (it shows in graphs if you have small army), get mages to search those provinces to find magic sites, research all the way to level 4 construction and level 9 alteration and do it all in 40 turns.
I'm sorry to say it but I just don't believe that is possible. It may be possible to get such gem income but you research will be practically 0 and you will have no army to speak off after first 40 turns. <hr /></blockquote>Besides the research you lose (~1000), you also need 50 commanders to hold the damn things... who need to be sitting on a lab to make the clams useful.

Duncanish

April 6th, 2004, 09:51 PM

What if Clams only had a chance to produce a Pearl, rather than the guaranteed 1 per turn? Maybe 25% chance per turn or something? Just a suggestion from someone who's never experienced hoarding. But it wouldn't really break them, and it wouldn't completely nerf them either. Less of a payoff, even with a huge number available, and you wouldn't be guaranteed to have the number of pearls you need when you might need them.

Chris Byler

April 6th, 2004, 10:53 PM

Originally posted by Jasper:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Chris Byler:
However, there's another issue that I think is being overlooked. Graeme has said several times that "there is nothing else to do with your water gems besides forge clams" (or words to that effect) and therefore you are not hurting your military power by using water gems for clam forging.Cleary an exaggeration IMHO. There are definitely usefull things to do with water gems, and not using them does have a cost. Sea Trolls, Water Queens, Frost Blades, Quickness boots, Quickening, Frozen Heart, and Murdering Winter are all effective. The contention that Murdering Winter isn't usefull borders on ludicrious IMHO.<hr /></blockquote>
Well, that's what I thought too. So why aren't the clam hoarders getting steamrolled when they dump half their total gem income into clams and then dump the clam income into more clams? Is it just the water nations doing this because it's too hard to attack them before they get rolling?

If that's the case, some of my suggestions for Water magic would help there too. Giant Turtles would be amphibious and summonable on land or sea, so they help a nation going into or out of the water, and improving the water breathing benefit of Water mages would obviously help too, as would the one-province "anyone can breathe here" spell. If the water breathing limits aren't raised, a strong summon would at least make more effective use of the limit you have.

<blockquote>quote:<hr />In the opinion of the DomII playing community, is this statement correct? And if so, isn't THAT the real problem? Water was too weak in Dom I - everyone agreed on that. Is it still too weak? And if so, shouldn't it be strengthened?I definitely agree that water is the weakest path, although not by so much as I used to think.

I like the ideas you have for improving it, especially the new summons and passive abilities. Another way would be to lower the casting level of some existing spells, as one of the things really hampering water is the lack of usefull lower levels spells. <hr /></blockquote>That would also lower their effective fatigue cost for mages of any given level - good.

I'd also like to see a mini Falling Frost available at a lower research level. It's a long time from Cold Bolt to Falling Frost, and other paths have already gotten several more combat options by the time FF becomes available.

Cainehill

April 6th, 2004, 11:08 PM

Originally posted by Daynarr:
I really wonder how can somebody make enough mages to produce clams, produce army that will conquer more land to get more water gem income, cover your borders so someone just doesn't walk over you (it shows in graphs if you have small army)(Italics are mine)

Keep in mind that many MP games, people turn off the graphs, and I can see why, even if I prefer the graphs.

First, as you say - it allows you to know everyone's army sizes. Their magical research. The number of provinces. Why? (This is more of a complaint to Illwinter, mind you.)

Most similar strategy games only only you see see the other nations/races/competitors progress if you have made contact with them. Some, only if you have spies or other diplomatic presence in their capitols - I wish Illwinter would do something along those lines, because as is, the graphs provide way too much information (in the military intelligence sense) for free.

Just to illustrate the absurdity of this - think of Vanheim, or Pangaea. You can't even _see_ their troops, but somehow you know their military strength? The graphs, as they are, are fine for SP games, but not for MP.

Especially since, as Norfleet has pointed out, the human gamers often get too discouraged when they see how far behind everyone they are, at which point, some of them quit, or worse, simply drop out without even turning things over to the AI.

Anyways - I digress. My point was that in a good portion of the MP games out there, you wouldn't know that someone was simply sitting in hiding hoarding gems, because the graphs aren't on.

Heh. But maybe we could get _new_ graphs showing exactly how many of each gem type every nation has? Then you could tell if someone was hoarding gems. If the graphs were turned on. (And it would make at _least_ as much sense as being able to determine how far along other people's magic research was, given that the gems might give off some emanation.)

Nagot Gick Fel

April 6th, 2004, 11:20 PM

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
So why aren't the clam hoarders getting steamrolled when they dump half their total gem income into clams and then dump the clam income into more clams?Fact is, in competitive games, these players usually are steamrolled. I've met this strategy since the early days of Dominions 1 (3 or 4 years ago?), and used it myself to a limited extent on a few occasions - although the main reason was to provide fuel for the then all-powerful Gateway when my astral income was subpar. But I never resorted to alchemizing astral to water to clams to do this, I merely used the surplus of water gems I had no immediate use for. The few players I've seen do extreme clamhoarding like described in this thread always lagged behind because of the sluggish ROI.

Stormbinder

April 7th, 2004, 01:09 AM

Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Teraswaerto:
Limiting the amount of Clams that can exist in the world at the same time would stop excessive hoarding while still leaving Clams useful. No, it would merely impose an artificial restraint causing people to race for clams before somebody else cornered the market on a scarce resource. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif <hr /></blockquote>You can limit ammount of claims _per pleyer_ (and call them Lesser Artifacts). Than the "race" that you describe would not be a problem. But as I said before, it would require more coding than changing clam price.

Gandalf Parker

April 7th, 2004, 01:40 AM

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
All recent MP games I have been in have had victory conditions set. Either by VP or dominion. They didn't Last very long (20-60 turns).

I think VP's is a good workaround on the clam hoarding. Let him hoard while I grab these VP sites. Battles for VP's will change the goals of the players and the way the game is played. I dont see a need to "fix" every way of winning the game as long as its not an automatic obvious choice. It kills a game for me to discover that there is strategy which will always win.

Which leaves me still undecided on this subject. On the one hand, game settings can make it not such a major deal which makes it not a major fix need IMHO. On the other hand it sounds as though its killer enough to make one type of games in Dom2, a rather popular type of games, to be less chosen or a fairly easy win. So it sounds like some sort of change might be good.

Jasper

April 7th, 2004, 01:41 AM

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
So why aren't the clam hoarders getting steamrolled when they dump half their total gem income into clams and then dump the clam income into more clams?Well, in my experience they do get steamrollered. This isn't a convincing argument however, as one can always wrangle endlessly about who's competition is better and who's really the better player, so I left it out (and I am _not_ presenting it as an argument now).

Plus, while I am confident I have some skill, I know there are players with far more experience than I. Wendigo, NGF (Jaques Vidal?), Alex Poger, and Pocus/Pythie spring immediately to mind, and I'm sure there are others as well.

Zapmeister

April 7th, 2004, 02:00 AM

Except that this is not, as you suggest, making astral clams "a bit harder" to make - it is making them much, much, harder to make for most nations due to lacking paths and increasing their cost by 50%Is this a good time to mention my preferred solution (water-1,nature-1) again? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Minrhael

April 7th, 2004, 04:12 AM

Let me preface my idea by saying I haven't even gotten into an MP game yet. Since it seems most people don't want clams too heavily penalized, would it be possible to change clams into one of the artifact types that don't stack? (like, if I remember right, 2 wineskins only allow 25 supply bonus not 50 if on one commander). Then at least the initial recruiting and upkeep costs of the hoarder would increase and they'd be slowed a little by a need to recruit more commanders. If that wouldn't be enough deterrent you could combine it with one of the previous posters suggestions to make it have a %chance of success, though I'd say 25% is a bit low.

If only one clam worked per commander and it only worked 50 - 75% of the time I'd think that would slow them down enough. I don't like 25% as the clam would then be pretty useless to commanders in the field who just want a gem or two to cast battlefield spells without having to put up a lab.

Alexander Seil

April 7th, 2004, 04:24 AM

Originally posted by Cainehill:
Keep in mind that many MP games, people turn off the graphs, and I can see why, even if I prefer the graphs.

First, as you say - it allows you to know everyone's army sizes. Their magical research. The number of provinces. Why? (This is more of a complaint to Illwinter, mind you.)

Most similar strategy games only only you see see the other nations/races/competitors progress if you have made contact with them. Some, only if you have spies or other diplomatic presence in their capitols - I wish Illwinter would do something along those lines, because as is, the graphs provide way too much information (in the military intelligence sense) for free.

Just to illustrate the absurdity of this - think of Vanheim, or Pangaea. You can't even _see_ their troops, but somehow you know their military strength? The graphs, as they are, are fine for SP games, but not for MP.
So? You could simply disable the graphs. Besides, as far as "military intelligence sense" goes, it's not like army commanders, modern or ancient, didn't know locations (and thus the number) of major enemy fortifications or the general composition and size of their enemies' forces. In Dom2, however, you don't even have reliable information as to the physical location of the other nation, let alone their army movements or positions of their forts, unless you actually send spies out to investigate.

[ April 07, 2004, 03:51: Message edited by: Alexander Seil ]

Graeme Dice

April 8th, 2004, 11:52 PM

Originally posted by AhhhFresh:
It all comes down to Wish.The more I think about it, the more I think that this is correct. Wish for example, allows you to buff a vampire queen up to 150 hitpoints, with all stats (other than MR) in the 30's. With decent items, it can become a nightmare to kill such a beast.

Cainehill

April 9th, 2004, 12:13 AM

Originally posted by Alexander Seil:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Cainehill:
Just to illustrate the absurdity of this - think of Vanheim, or Pangaea. You can't even _see_ their troops, but somehow you know their military strength? The graphs, as they are, are fine for SP games, but not for MP.
So? You could simply disable the graphs. Besides, as far as "military intelligence sense" goes, it's not like army commanders, modern or ancient, didn't know locations (and thus the number) of major enemy fortifications or the general composition and size of their enemies' forces. In Dom2, however, you don't even have reliable information as to the physical location of the other nation, let alone their army movements or positions of their forts, unless you actually send spies out to investigate. <hr /></blockquote>You missed the gist of my point, such as it was. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Other people were saying that you could, by looking at the graphs, tell if someone was hiding away just building clams, and set forth to wallop them before the clam-hoarding turns into Wishing.

Which isn't possible if the graphs are turned off, and as I attempted to point out, there's many reasons why the graphs would be turned off in a MP game.

Truper

April 9th, 2004, 12:22 AM

Clams, clams, clams, clams,
Clams, clams, clams, clams,
Lovely clams, wondeful claaaams!

AhhhFresh

April 9th, 2004, 12:26 AM

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by AhhhFresh:
It all comes down to Wish.The more I think about it, the more I think that this is correct. Wish for example, allows you to buff a vampire queen up to 150 hitpoints, with all stats (other than MR) in the 30's. With decent items, it can become a nightmare to kill such a beast. <hr /></blockquote>So we see that Zen is smarter than we think he is. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif (No offense Zen)

Obviously I agree, since I posted the original quote... but allow me to expound.

Clams are nice, Clams are good... I make them myself. But what do they really do?

They let you chain cast WISH while possibly having an unassuming amount of territory in an MP game. IE You can come out of nowhere and win the game... because that is what WISH was meant to do. Change the game.

We're talking a Vampire Queen every turn.

The old rules don't apply.

HOWEVER

If you can't cast WISH what now? Well, you can chaincast Ethergate, which is pretty sweet... but not worth it. I love Ethergate, but I can't imagine commiting that much, if all I'm gonna get is a buncha big dudes with moonblades.

You can also convert those pearls to other denominations pretty easily... which is nice, but not a game breaker.

[ April 08, 2004, 23:28: Message edited by: AhhhFresh ]

Nephelim

April 9th, 2004, 01:40 AM

Originally posted by AhhhFresh:
We're talking a Vampire Queen every turn.
Hrm... Why a vampire queen instead of a doom horror?

I played with wish a bit, and really couldn't find a better bang for my buck than a doom horror... GOR him and send him to take just about anything. Stat move of 10, and apparently impossible to kill. If he had hand slots he could take fortresses with a couple gate cleavers... sadly, he does not.

Is there some fatal flaw in the doom horror that I haven't seen? I generally give him a pendant of luck and an amulet of magic resistance.

Well, I often don't get up to wish before a game is over, so 'generally' might not be accurate.

Yes, these are SP games... My skills aren't up to taking on human opponents yet.. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Zapmeister

April 9th, 2004, 01:47 AM

The thing about WISH is that it has a seriously high coolness factor. It would be a real pity to lose it, and I would prefer any other solution that works.

Maybe alter the wishes themselves? No more asking for specific creature types - maybe you could wish for a "saviour" or somesuch, and get a random creature from a pool of pretty-good critters.

Maybe also do something about chain-casting Armageddon. In general, have wishes that improve the position of the wisher, rather than trashing everyone else.

Or just make clams water-1, nature-1 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Graeme Dice

April 9th, 2004, 01:55 AM

Originally posted by Nephelim:
Hrm... Why a vampire queen instead of a doom horror?More item slots, and immortality. Think of a vampire queen pretender with rainbow 5, astral 10, and 150 hitpoints in a dominion 10 province. Give her a sword of swiftness or some other weapon, charcoal shield, starshine skullcap, elemental armour, quickness boots, luck pendant and anti-magic amulet. A wish for power brings your attack, defense and magic resist up to over 30, and you are completely immune to the elements. There are very few spells that will get through at this point. You'll also regenerate something like 15 hitpoints per turn. I've had one wipe out an army with about 15 deep seers, 5 kings of the deeps, and 50+ sea trolls.

The doom horrow on the other hand, suffers from a relative lack of item slots, and is still vulnerable to elemental damage. They definetly are superior raiders to undefended provinces in my opinion, since its a rare map that they can't traverse in one turn.

[ April 09, 2004, 00:57: Message edited by: Graeme Dice ]

Daynarr

April 9th, 2004, 02:22 AM

Originally posted by Cainehill:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Alexander Seil:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Cainehill:
Just to illustrate the absurdity of this - think of Vanheim, or Pangaea. You can't even _see_ their troops, but somehow you know their military strength? The graphs, as they are, are fine for SP games, but not for MP.
So? You could simply disable the graphs. Besides, as far as "military intelligence sense" goes, it's not like army commanders, modern or ancient, didn't know locations (and thus the number) of major enemy fortifications or the general composition and size of their enemies' forces. In Dom2, however, you don't even have reliable information as to the physical location of the other nation, let alone their army movements or positions of their forts, unless you actually send spies out to investigate. <hr /></blockquote>You missed the gist of my point, such as it was. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Other people were saying that you could, by looking at the graphs, tell if someone was hiding away just building clams, and set forth to wallop them before the clam-hoarding turns into Wishing.

Which isn't possible if the graphs are turned off, and as I attempted to point out, there's many reasons why the graphs would be turned off in a MP game. <hr /></blockquote>Actually, your point seems to be that graphs are too accurate, and it was responded such way.

As for turning off graphs in MP game there are lots of reasons not to turn them off so it comes down to personal preference.

The thing is graphs are only one (and easiest) way to discover if someone is turtling in a game. Other method would be using scouts or diplomacy (finding out info from another player) to name a few.

BTW. has ANYONE pulled that tactic off in MP game?

As for the Wish - it's level 9-alteration spell and by the time you research it and get enough gem income to cast it, it will be late game. If you fear someone might pull it off, just increase research cost and make SURE it will be cast in (very) late game.

Norfleet

April 9th, 2004, 02:22 AM

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
A wish for power brings your attack, defense and magic resist up to over 30, and you are completely immune to the elements. There are very few spells that will get through at this point. You'll also regenerate something like 15 hitpoints per turn. I've had one wipe out an army with about 15 deep seers, 5 kings of the deeps, and 50+ sea trolls.A wish for power does not grant improved magic resistance. It is impossible to improve magic resistance in such a way: Power only is +50 HP, +20 Str, +10 Atk/Def/Prec. And 15 deep seers, 5 Kings of the Deep, and sea trolls are weaklings anyway. They are by far not equal in cost, so it's hardly a surprise that they failed.

Chris Byler

April 9th, 2004, 02:32 AM

BTW, whoever posted that a nature-1 water-1 clam would be beyond the reach of any national mage without a lucky random pick was wrong: he reckoned without the Marshmaster (Miasma C'tis) and the Master of Five Elements (Spring&Autumn T'ien Ch'i). Both have fixed water and nature magic. So those two nations would become the new favored clam hoarders - but hey, at least they can be easily attacked, having most of their powerbase on land. (Of course, jade priestesses would also be able to forge clams, and any nation with water *or* nature and random picks would be a potential clam hoarder - so add Pangaea, Man, and IIRC Machaka to the list.)

Even before clam hoarding was introduced, I'd already decided not to play any MP game with the graphs off. So that doesn't affect me. I still wouldn't mind seeing the clam raised to Water-3 though, if it really is a problem. It already takes 20 clam-turns to pay for a clam; raising it to 40 would pretty much eliminate clams as anything other than a slow form of alchemy for "excess" water gems. (I don't see how your water gems can be excess unless your *only* opponents are Caelum and Jotunheim and you're playing on a map with no seas, and even then you can probably find some use.)

Taqwus

April 9th, 2004, 02:48 AM

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Nephelim:
Hrm... Why a vampire queen instead of a doom horror?More item slots, and immortality. Think of a vampire queen pretender with rainbow 5, astral 10, and 150 hitpoints in a dominion 10 province. Give her a sword of swiftness or some other weapon, charcoal shield, starshine skullcap, elemental armour, quickness boots, luck pendant and anti-magic amulet. A wish for power brings your attack, defense and magic resist up to over 30, and you are completely immune to the elements. There are very few spells that will get through at this point. You'll also regenerate something like 15 hitpoints per turn. I've had one wipe out an army with about 15 deep seers, 5 kings of the deeps, and 50+ sea trolls.

<hr /></blockquote>A Vampire Queen that's rainbow 5 is also an incredibly enormous investment. Empower up to Astral 6, lend 3 astral boosters (could rely on items more if you don't mind horror-marking), that's somewhere around 350 extra astral above the initial 100-astral VQ wish.

Wish for power, that's +100. Wish for magic power x 5, that's plus +500. Now you're at 1050 astral. Then throw in the cost of the gear too.

You could get 10 doom horrors for that price, for instance, which gives you a lot more strategic flexibility (raid 10 back-end provinces in a turn, for instance; oh, can also fly all-weather IIRC) and won't all die to a single unlucky die roll or get auto-paralyzed by Petrify or fall to a lucky hit from a Golem with a gate cleaver or what-have-you.

The doom horrow on the other hand, suffers from a relative lack of item slots, and is still vulnerable to elemental damage. They definetly are superior raiders to undefended provinces in my opinion, since its a rare map that they can't traverse in one turn.
It also is pretty decent even without gear or a massive investment in empowering.

[ April 09, 2004, 01:51: Message edited by: Taqwus ]

Norfleet

April 9th, 2004, 02:49 AM

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
Even before clam hoarding was introduced, I'd already decided not to play any MP game with the graphs off. So that doesn't affect me.Graphs do not effectively reveal clam hoarding, since clam income, like fever fetishes, earth blood stones, and certain summoned units, receive their gems directly and not in the score graph. Besides, clam hoarding wasn't "introduced", it's always been around. The concept of accumulating things that give you income is as old as time itself, and this is generally a rather slow investment process anyway, barring some lucky sites. Since there are no nations that can naturally produce all of the apparatus involved in the creation of clams, this is a greatly exaggerated issue.

PvK

April 9th, 2004, 03:06 AM

Originally posted by Teraswaerto:
Limiting the amount of Clams that can exist in the world at the same time would stop excessive hoarding while still leaving Clams useful. I agree. This is about the same as my earlier suggestion, which I like a little better but would be a little for complex (but perhaps more fun) to code. That was, that there are only so many pearls generated by all the clams in the world per turn, split between all the clams, max 1 per clam. The number could be say equal to the number of sea provinces in the world, or perhaps twice that number. Clams work normally until that number is exceeded, but beyond that start having a less and less chance of getting one of the limited number of pearls that will be generated.

PvK

Graeme Dice

April 9th, 2004, 03:12 AM

Originally posted by Taqwus:
and won't all die to a single unlucky die roll or get auto-paralyzed by Petrify or fall to a lucky hit from a Golem with a gate cleaver or what-have-you.Petrify is about a 4 turn paralysis, that's not nearly enough to kill a beast that regenerates 15 per turn with invulnerability. That's also a rather lucky die roll. Magic resist of 35 gives about a 0.004% chance for an effect to take hold with standard penetration. If you do manage to kill the VQ, then it's only a couple of turns till it's back and ready to fight again, even if it dies outside of its dominion.

Graeme Dice

April 9th, 2004, 03:14 AM

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Since there are no nations that can naturally produce all of the apparatus involved in the creation of clams, this is a greatly exaggerated issue. Every nation with a water 1 national mage, or a relatively inexpensive random pick has the "apparatus" to build clams.

Graeme Dice

April 9th, 2004, 03:19 AM

Originally posted by Norfleet:
And 15 deep seers, 5 Kings of the Deep, and sea trolls are weaklings anyway. They are by far not equal in cost, so it's hardly a surprise that they failed. They are very similar in cost, when you consider the gold spent on upkeep and purchasing, and don't consider the astral pearls from clams as part of the cost. After all, they are entirely free after 20 turns. Those mages cost 4000 gold, and the troops alone had an upkeep of 150. The water gem cost was around 140. That kind of conventional army should be able to destroy any lone unit with only minimal losses, or there is a serious balance problem.

Norfleet

April 9th, 2004, 07:05 AM

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
Every nation with a water 1 national mage, or a relatively inexpensive random pick has the "apparatus" to build clams. You're forgetting that without hammers and/or a site, it's much harder to get the ball rolling. Hammers are 20 earth gems base, and every forger needs one or the ROI goes down greatly.

Stormbinder

April 9th, 2004, 07:19 AM

Originally posted by Norfleet:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
Every nation with a water 1 national mage, or a relatively inexpensive random pick has the "apparatus" to build clams. You're forgetting that without hammers and/or a site, it's much harder to get the ball rolling. Hammers are 20 earth gems base, and every forger needs one or the ROI goes down greatly. <hr /></blockquote>Not really. Only first one is 20 earth gems, every additional one almost always will cost you 15 earth gems or less, since you will be using hammer to forge new hammer, not to mention forging site that you might find.

[ April 09, 2004, 07:02: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Norfleet

April 9th, 2004, 09:44 AM

Originally posted by Stormbinder:
Not really. Only first one is 20 earth gems, every additional one almost always will cost you 15 earth gems or less, since you will be using hammer to forge new hammer, not to mention forging site that you might find. You're forgetting that it takes at least an Earth-2 mage, normally, to produce hammers, with the aid of boots. Only a few nations are equipped with this combination (Pan, IF Ulm, Atlantis) normally, and a few others might get access if they got very lucky with randoms. R'lyeh Starspawns are, unfortunately, excluded due to their unfortunate lack of feet that renders them unable to use Earth boots.

If anything, Atlantis is the definitive clam-hoarding nation, having everything required to make clams: Linked randoms on a King of the Deep that can easily roll Earth, cheap water-1 nationals, protected, underwater base, and home province water income as a seed.

So if clam-hoarding is so overwhelmingly powerful, why is Atlantis not much more popular?

[ April 09, 2004, 08:45: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Norfleet

April 9th, 2004, 09:54 AM

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
They are very similar in cost, when you consider the gold spent on upkeep and purchasing, and don't consider the astral pearls from clams as part of the cost. After all, they are entirely free after 20 turns. Those mages cost 4000 gold, and the troops alone had an upkeep of 150. The water gem cost was around 140. That kind of conventional army should be able to destroy any lone unit with only minimal losses, or there is a serious balance problem. By that logic, the astral pearls on YOUR clams are also free, and obviously, you've chosen to utilize them this way instead. Don't tell me you don't have them, you're Atlantis, *THE* top clam hoarding nation.

Furthermore, your army was tailored for a very poor fit against your opposition: Water mages, who are nearly entirely reliant on cold attacks for their battlefield spells, are very useless against a cold-immune target with high protection. They may as well have been complete non-participants, as you effectively sent them to their deaths.

Sea trolls are rather poor combatants for their cost: Their protection is substandard, and they generally underperform compared to standard trolls. The Sea King itself is a pure water mage, and suffers from the above....not to mention the number of casualties you inflicted on yourself by not isolating these dangerous, prone to Breath of Wintering water mages. Their only strength lies in the ability to be summoned on land and then marched into the sea to invade sea provinces...an advantage you more or less throw away by using them to fight on land. I do not think my empowered prestige pretender would have been necessary to drive your forces back into the sea: The ordinary, default model I started with should have been adequate, given the absolutely lousy force composition you chose for the job.

Look on the bright side: At least your upkeep is lower now.

[ April 09, 2004, 08:55: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Stormbinder

April 9th, 2004, 12:39 PM

Originally posted by Norfleet:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Stormbinder:
Not really. Only first one is 20 earth gems, every additional one almost always will cost you 15 earth gems or less, since you will be using hammer to forge new hammer, not to mention forging site that you might find. You're forgetting that it takes at least an Earth-2 mage, normally, to produce hammers, with the aid of boots.
<hr /></blockquote>I am not forgeting it. But you are forgeting the fact that it was you who mentioned hammers in the first place in realtions to clam forging, and you have said that it takes 20 earth gem to make them. I was simply correcting you, since if you are capable of making 1 hammer obviously you are capable of making another. Availabilty of hammers is entirely different topic from their gem cost.

[ April 09, 2004, 11:43: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]

Graeme Dice

April 9th, 2004, 04:04 PM

Originally posted by Norfleet:
By that logic, the astral pearls on YOUR clams are also free, and obviously, you've chosen to utilize them this way instead. Don't tell me you don't have them, you're Atlantis, *THE* top clam hoarding nation.I have not built a single clam, since I consider it too cheesy.

Furthermore, your army was tailored for a very poor fit against your opposition: Water mages, who are nearly entirely reliant on cold attacks for their battlefield spells, are very useless against a cold-immune target with high protection.And I suppose you know of some other national mages that Atlantis can use then?

The ordinary, default model I started with should have been adequate, given the absolutely lousy force composition you chose for the job.Your original pretender would have had no more than about 100 hitpoints, and would have had only 4 mirror images on a defense of around 10. If I was building clams, then I would have had a whole bunch of herald lances on initiates of the deep, which I know from experience can defeat a standard issue VQ. Of course, my major problem was that I got the useless water elementals instead of the much more useful ice elementals.

[ April 09, 2004, 15:06: Message edited by: Graeme Dice ]

Norfleet

April 9th, 2004, 05:31 PM

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
I have not built a single clam, since I consider it too cheesy.So you willfully squander your national resources over a belief in what you see as "cheese" instead of playing the game as written. That is certainly your perogative, but does not figure into a rational analysis.

And I suppose you know of some other national mages that Atlantis can use then?The sheer amount of research you were giving up on such an excursion, towing around an entire boatload of mages, must have been immense. Me, I never tow around mages, particularly mages that I know have no effective magics, into a battle unless I need a very specific spell cast, when they could instead be generating research...unless you are finished with all of your research?

Your original pretender would have had no more than about 100 hitpoints, and would have had only 4 mirror images on a defense of around 10. If I was building clams, then I would have had a whole bunch of herald lances on initiates of the deep, which I know from experience can defeat a standard issue VQ. Of course, my major problem was that I got the useless water elementals instead of the much more useful ice elementals. I think that even my basic starting air-4 gets me a lot more than 4 mirror images. And I'm surprised you didn't have herald lances anyway. It's not like they're expensive, hard-to-get items, and if you're choosing to use them on initiates, which are capitol only, as opposed to the more available, and disposable, scouts, you're not going to need that many.

And of course you got water elementals instead of ice ones. You have forgotten that the Mictlan climate is warm, not cold?

[ April 09, 2004, 16:31: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Graeme Dice

April 9th, 2004, 07:54 PM

Originally posted by Norfleet:
So you willfully squander your national resources over a belief in what you see as "cheese" instead of playing the game as written. That is certainly your perogative, but does not figure into a rational analysis.It also illustrates the weakness of water magic, since the only effective thing to do with it in the very long term is to turn it into astral pearls.

The sheer amount of research you were giving up on such an excursion, towing around an entire boatload of mages, must have been immense.Sure, it would have been large in the early game, but by this point it isn't much of an expense. This is still an illustration of an imbalance, since no single unit should be able to destroy an army made up of the toughest summons that are available to that nation, and certainly not one backed up by multiple mages with ninth level spells researched.

I think that even my basic starting air-4 gets me a lot more than 4 mirror images. And I'm surprised you didn't have herald lances anyway.They are very expensive, since they are 10 astral pearls, and astral is the most generally useful magic.

And of course you got water elementals instead of ice ones. You have forgotten that the Mictlan climate is warm, not cold?Did you happen to notice the snow on the ground in that battle? I would have thought that that would have been enough to cause ice elementals to form.

Stormbinder

April 10th, 2004, 12:13 AM

Originally posted by Norfleet:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
I have not built a single clam, since I consider it too cheesy.So you willfully squander your national resources over a belief in what you see as "cheese" instead of playing the game as written. That is certainly your perogative, but does not figure into a rational analysis.

<hr /></blockquote>Norfleet, I think you keep confusing "wining" the game with having fun from playing it. Granted, it is possible than for you one equal another. But personally I try never to use "cheesy" tactics in my games, because it spoils the fun for me, since I know that I am mostly wining not because of my skill and intelligence, but because I am abusing very simple and overpowered strategy again and again.

And yes, there are cheesy strategies in any strategy games, and I've played a lot of them. Dom2 is much more balanced in this respect that average strategic game, but it doesn't mean it has zero cheesy and/or abusive strategies. Clams is by far the most obvious example of it.

Chris Byler

April 10th, 2004, 05:17 PM

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Norfleet:
So you willfully squander your national resources over a belief in what you see as "cheese" instead of playing the game as written. That is certainly your perogative, but does not figure into a rational analysis.It also illustrates the weakness of water magic, since the only effective thing to do with it in the very long term is to turn it into astral pearls.
<hr /></blockquote>I think this is far from demonstrated. Although water could use some new tricks, "the only effective thing" is a vast overstatement.

<blockquote>quote:<hr />The sheer amount of research you were giving up on such an excursion, towing around an entire boatload of mages, must have been immense.Sure, it would have been large in the early game, but by this point it isn't much of an expense. This is still an illustration of an imbalance, since no single unit should be able to destroy an army made up of the toughest summons that are available to that nation, and certainly not one backed up by multiple mages with ninth level spells researched.
<hr /></blockquote>
Oh, you had Water Queens and Abominations in that battle? They weren't mentioned in the previous post. Sea Trolls are far from "the toughest summons available" to ANY nation. Granted, some of the toughest summons available to Atlantis are aquatic (where are the items that let a commander take aquatic troops onto land? Amulet of the Fish will let Auluudh or a Nerid come out to play, but not bring Sea Serpents, War Lobsters or Crab Hybrids with them.), but they still have some better options than Sea Trolls.

<blockquote>quote:<hr />I think that even my basic starting air-4 gets me a lot more than 4 mirror images. And I'm surprised you didn't have herald lances anyway.They are very expensive, since they are 10 astral pearls, and astral is the most generally useful magic.
<hr /></blockquote>
I wouldn't consider a 10 gem item "very expensive" - certainly not compared to multiple-Wished VQs and their equipment.

<blockquote>quote:<hr />And of course you got water elementals instead of ice ones. You have forgotten that the Mictlan climate is warm, not cold?Did you happen to notice the snow on the ground in that battle? I would have thought that that would have been enough to cause ice elementals to form. <hr /></blockquote>Well, next time cast Wolven Winter to make sure. You have all those water mages and research and "useless" water gems, right?

Ice elementals, BTW, can damage cold immune creatures just fine (although they might have some problem with supercombatants).

It does seem to me that water magic isn't very useful when fighting on land against cold immune opponents, and there are a disproportionate number of cold immune monsters (and of course the vast majority of provinces are land). There are only a few water battle spells (Ice Strike, Sailors Death) that work against cold immune targets at all (castable on land, anyway), and they aren't very powerful (Sailors Death doesn't even work on inanimate targets). Worse, Atlantis's normal troops use poison weapons and armor, and the largest Category of cold immune creatures is ALSO poison immune, making their normal troops less effective too. Fire and Air don't have many ways of damaging elemental immune targets either - but there are far fewer creatures naturally immune to fire or lightning.

How about a Waterspout that stays on the battlefield for a few rounds (like the Cloud spells), crushes targets and throws them around (similar to trample)? Or a Water Jet that just deals some physical damage but doesn't require another path like Geyser? Those might not work that well against supercombatants, but they'd at least help against undead or Jotun armies.

To a certain extent, the water nations' difficulty on land counterbalances their defensive advantage in being difficult for land nations to attack. But inability to project power onto land will eventually be crippling. Furthermore, land nations that have water magic (Caelum, Jotunheim) have this problem too (although in their case there's a consolation prize - somewhat easier access to the sea than most land nations).

Graeme Dice

April 10th, 2004, 05:51 PM

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
I think this is far from demonstrated. Although water could use some new tricks, "the only effective thing" is a vast overstatement.I don't think it's an overstatement at all. I think it's very clear that in the long term, nothing will pay off as much as building clams. You have a limited set of three water queens that can summon their own troops, and the rest of the uses for large numbers of water gems only have effects for a few turns.

Oh, you had Water Queens and Abominations in that battle?Only one of the water queens is amphibious, and abominations are astral summons, not water.

They weren't mentioned in the previous post. Sea Trolls are far from "the toughest summons available" to ANY nation.And that's part of the problem. Atlantis has no summonable or tough troops that can come onto land. The mother guard are nice, but its too expensive to haul around a lot of them.

but they still have some better options than Sea Trolls.On land? I suppose they could go for enliven statues, but those aren't particularly impressive either.

I wouldn't consider a 10 gem item "very expensive" - certainly not compared to multiple-Wished VQs and their equipment.The cost of astral pearls produced by clams is effectively 0 after 20 turns.

Ice elementals, BTW, can damage cold immune creatures just fine (although they might have some problem with supercombatants).Like a 250 hitpoint vampire queen with immunity to every element, a 0.004% chance of MR spells effecting it, and multiple damage shields you mean? I suppose one could try and use mandragoras, but their sleep vines aren't particularly likely take effect and the fire shield will make mincemeat of them.

[ April 10, 2004, 16:55: Message edited by: Graeme Dice ]

AhhhFresh

April 10th, 2004, 11:50 PM

Like a 250 hitpoint vampire queen with immunity to every element, a 0.004% chance of MR spells effecting it, and multiple damage shields you mean? I suppose one could try and use mandragoras, but their sleep vines aren't particularly likely take effect and the fire shield will make mincemeat of them.This is not something, I'm very familar with, as I have yet to get to the "uber-late" game mechanics in any of the MP games I am participating.

But my feeling is, that the only way to properly defeat an opponent's SC, is with your own SC... SC's are specifically designed to make mince meat of hordes of troops... summons or not.

The fact that she's undead, means there are weapons out there that do x3 AP damage to her... so you need somebody who can take and give a few hits, but it doesn't seem so hard to achieve...

But maybe I'm missing something?

Graeme Dice

April 11th, 2004, 12:29 AM

Originally posted by AhhhFresh:
The fact that she's undead, means there are weapons out there that do x3 AP damage to her... so you need somebody who can take and give a few hits, but it doesn't seem so hard to achieve... Sure, but you then need to get your SC's into the same place as her, which can be difficult with something so mobile and stealthy.

AhhhFresh

April 11th, 2004, 01:01 AM

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by AhhhFresh:
The fact that she's undead, means there are weapons out there that do x3 AP damage to her... so you need somebody who can take and give a few hits, but it doesn't seem so hard to achieve... Sure, but you then need to get your SC's into the same place as her, which can be difficult with something so mobile and stealthy. <hr /></blockquote>Her stealth is +0... which is not very scary. Just set all your provinces in range to 10, and you at least know where she is... obviously, she'll obliterate said defenders, but if she can't hide, then she will be a victim to your SC.

That is just a matter of being the better player... and/or being lucky.

She wants to stay in positive dominion, and doesn't want to be confronted in general... so that makes her weak.

Yes, this is all theoretical... I'm not an MP badass. (Though I wish I was!)

Norfleet

April 11th, 2004, 01:23 AM

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
Sure, but you then need to get your SC's into the same place as her, which can be difficult with something so mobile and stealthy. That can be a surprisingly trivial exercise.

Sun Tzu, "Art of War"
If we wish to fight, the enemy can be forced to an engagement even though he be sheltered behind a high rampart and a deep ditch. All we need do is attack some other place that he will be obliged to relieve.You don't have to find the VQ. Just force it to come to you.

AhhhFresh

April 11th, 2004, 02:07 AM

Originally posted by Norfleet:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
Sure, but you then need to get your SC's into the same place as her, which can be difficult with something so mobile and stealthy. That can be a surprisingly trivial exercise.

Sun Tzu, "Art of War"
If we wish to fight, the enemy can be forced to an engagement even though he be sheltered behind a high rampart and a deep ditch. All we need do is attack some other place that he will be obliged to relieve.You don't have to find the VQ. Just force it to come to you. <hr /></blockquote>On the OFFENSIVE I think that VQ's are as strong as strong can be. If you let them dictate how it'd gonna be, then you've already lost.

However, if you force them to react to you, then they're no more than expensive scouts... *ouch* that guy had a flambeau! C'est la vie.

Stormbinder

April 11th, 2004, 08:33 AM

Originally posted by AhhhFresh:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Norfleet:
<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
Sure, but you then need to get your SC's into the same place as her, which can be difficult with something so mobile and stealthy. That can be a surprisingly trivial exercise.

Sun Tzu, "Art of War"
If we wish to fight, the enemy can be forced to an engagement even though he be sheltered behind a high rampart and a deep ditch. All we need do is attack some other place that he will be obliged to relieve.You don't have to find the VQ. Just force it to come to you. <hr /></blockquote>On the OFFENSIVE I think that VQ's are as strong as strong can be. If you let them dictate how it'd gonna be, then you've already lost.

However, if you force them to react to you, then they're no more than expensive scouts... *ouch* that guy had a flambeau! C'est la vie. <hr /></blockquote>Actually VQ is stronger on defense than on offense. That's because on defense she tend to fight in higher friendly dominion, and that makes her stronger (in addition to her immortality in friendly dominion of course). While on offense you more often than not press into hostile territory, especially if your opponent is aware what he is dealing with and has build temple/preaching priests everywhere along your borders.

I had a game where me and Truper come to virtual stalemate for about 20 turns, despite intense fighting and heavy casaulties. We both were using VQs and we both had to be very carefull about our armies and our pretenders, dominion-wise. I won the war eventually, but this was mostly because I managed to outmanerved my opponent and pushed my dominion deeper and deeper into his territory, as well as inflicting more losses on him than he did on me. The "attack with dominion" was performed though combination of temples, preachers, castles protecting most important temples, and my assasin prophet preaching and spreading dominion in most critical places deep behind enemy lines. Meanwhile it was mostly war of attrition, since any strong army than any of us could move forward could be easely wiped out by minimal forces lead by fully decked enemy VQ.

[ April 11, 2004, 07:39: Message edited by: Stormbinder ]