Two Birds with One Stone Suggestion

[Esben Mose Hansen]

I like the idea of making clams unfavorable by introducing better waterspells. Heres my proposal:

The CURE. Cure all afflication on a single unit/leader.

The cost should be quite high, of course. I do realize that this makes the SC problem worse, if there is one, but that could be cured with:

Dry-freeze: Kill random unit, range 100, 100% success rate.

That would make an effective counter to the one-SC attack (since defenders go first; for defenders summons would be an effective countermeasure)

Man, would I like to be able to mod spell effects? :-)

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:

quote:

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Originally posted by PvK:
All the clams in the game only generate a maximum number of astral pearls equal to the number of sea provinces on the map. If the world holds more clams than seas, then only certain random clams chosen each month, will get pearls, up to that number.

Nice. Except that in the pros and cons list, one of the things listed as an pro was that it was one of the few things Atlantis had going for it.

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Clams on mages in the water should then have a better chance of their clams generating a pearl. Live wet clams are better than dry, dead, clams.

Maybe a 75/25 weighting. That way Atlantis still gets its benefit, while land nations have some reason for building clams, but not to the point of absurdity, since the clams would get to a point of diminishing returns.

Hmmm. Maybe if magic items could be deconstructed, recovering say, 10-50% of the gems that went in?

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by LintMan:
Some quick ideas:

* "Harvest Rains" - increases supply in all provinces, according to dominion strength
* "Fountain of Youth" - increases pop growth in all provinces, according to dom strength. (Hmm. I really like this one!)
* "Weather Control" - caster specifies preferred heat/cold scale, and globally, all provinces are pushed towards it. (I'm thinking it'd be a weaker effect than Illwinter, but more flexible)
* "Ice Castle" - It magically never completely melts, but its defense is based on province heat/cold scale.
* "Sea Nymphs" - mid-high summon: amphib, awe +0, charm attack
* "Summon giant crocodile(s)" - low-mid range summon, amphib, maybe comparable strength to nature lion or kithaironic lion spells.
* "Summon Yeti" - mid or high-end thugish summon, possibly an SC-able chassis.
* "Call Nessie" - high-end amphib summon, maybe comparable toughness/cost to Tarrasque
* "Staff of Frost" - 40 water gem item, casts falling frost
* "Helm of Liquid Form" - 80 water gem item, reduces all physical damage taken by 75%
* "Staff of Speed" - 40-80 Water gem item, casts quickness on units up to say range 20, area 1-2

Nice list. Keep thinking.

The weather control might also give a 10% protection against certain special events and spells (flood, tornado, rains)

[Scott Hebert]

Originally posted by PvK:
Just increasing the gem cost might be sufficient, too. Adjust the math that was done - seems like there must be a balance point. 20 Water gems? 40? 20 Water + 10 or 20 Astral? I sort of think 20 Water would blunt the problem, but I'd want to see the resulting change in the numbers that were done before.

20 Water makes Clams Atlantis-only, really. That means it requires a Water-3 Mage to Forge (or 2 with FotA). Not only does Atlantis have the only National Water-3 Mages, it also has a 1/8 chance of having Earth-2 Mages, which enable the Earth Boots/Dwarven Hammer progression.

10W10S, OTOH, hands the Clams to Rlyeh. Not just Rlyeh, but Arco and Pythium (Arco more than Pythium, though). Atlantis doesn't lose that much, thanks to the Deep Seers. Caelum loses out, unless they play with a Pretender made to make Clams. Tien Chi would use their Jade Emperor.

Another possible solution is to have the Clam automatically graft to the forger. This sort of makes use of Gandalf's idea, but takes it further. Clearly, if Clams are unremovable (and auto-attach to Forger), then the number of Clams a given player can have, max, is twice the number of Mages able to Forge the Clam (barring bizarre Misc. slots).

A weird effect of this is to make the Robe of the Sea more useful, as a Water-1 mage with it could Forge 2 Clams, as opposed to only the one if they had a Water Bracelet.

Of course, the most radical idea I have is to simply make the Pearls unremovable (you'd probably want to do this to all items/Pretenders that auto-produce Gems/Pearls). Those items would then change from an investment opportunity to more of a battlefield-enhancer. If this was done, I'd hope to see at least one gem-producing item per path (except probably blood slaves... though that would fix the Blood Sacrifice problem).

I note that this thread has completely derailed from its original intent. Ah well; I guess it happens. Does anyone think the item-destruction ideas are good?

Scott

[Tris]

Clams only work when equipped on mages?

Rationale: Magic flows more strongly around a mage, the clam uses this energy to create astral pearls.

Effect: Stops Scouts and other cheap things being able to hold clams. Makes upkeep for dedicated clam holders more expensive, while still keeping clams just as useful for mages to carry around to supply them with gems in the field.

Would help a bit? I think?

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Tris:
Clams only work when equipped on mages?

Rationale: Magic flows more strongly around a mage, the clam uses this energy to create astral pearls.

Effect: Stops Scouts and other cheap things being able to hold clams. Makes upkeep for dedicated clam holders more expensive, while still keeping clams just as useful for mages to carry around to supply them with gems in the field.

Would help a bit? I think?

Wouldn't help with clams, imo. Typically you have a regular fleet of mages all researching, especially with the nations that are prone to clam hoarding.

But if it were done for all gem producing items, it might be an idea - no more black servant or other petty undead being used for fever fetishes, for example.

[LintMan]

Originally posted by Cainehill:
But if it were done for all gem producing items, it might be an idea - no more black servant or other petty undead being used for fever fetishes, for example.

You'd still be able to drop them on Revenants and Spectres (cheap 9/10 death gem mage summons) pretty easily, and you'd get at least some value out of them as researchers while they also carry the fetishes.

But I strongly suspect that fever fetishes are going to no longer work on undead in the next patch. (I have no inside info: I just remember seeing a few forum Posts by one of the illwinter guys being surprised that they worked on undead, and implying that was in need of correction.)