The next patch

[Graeme Dice]

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.