[Micah]

Xietor - When you're talking about popping wishes every turn the cost to empower a wisher is pretty trivial. Assuming you can find an S1 mage to start with it's only 210 pearls to get to S5, which is about the highest nationals go...2 wishes, or 2 turns of income at that point of the game. I can't see how this could POSSIBLY be a realistic argument given your proposed gem income.

Likewise, you not liking a tactic is not a valid reason for it to be removed. Some people don't like SCs, some people don't like blood magic (which, incidentally, is a much bigger MM issue than clams, especially if you want to blood sacrifice), some people don't like blesses. I'm sure people don't like a lot of other stuff in the game as well, but each of these things adds more variety and complexity to the game. If clamming was *broken* then there would be an issue with it, but it's not unbalanced, it's just something you don't like.

Also, given the moddability of Dominions it's a very easy fix to get rid of the clams with a simple mod for the games you play in, so I'm not sure what the big crusade to get rid of them entirely is about, since they're not really unbalanced (incidentally I think the aquatic nations need the help given their very limited expansion options during the midgame.)