Are devils worth 7 blood each?

[Soapyfrog]

Thufir said:
Thirdly (and what this post is mostly about), I believe soapyfrog is misguided in objecting to exponential growth. I mean every kind of bootstrapping game since the beginning of time (with recent, relevant examples being Civ, MoM, MOO2, et al) has featured exponential growth prominently.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Soapyfrog]

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

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

[johan osterman]

Soapyfrog said:

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

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

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

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

....

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

[Soapyfrog]

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

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

[Boron]

Soapyfrog said:

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

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

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


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

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

[Thufir]

Soapyfrog said:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Soapyfrog]

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

Yep we agree on this... and the game is just not really designed with this stuff in mind, it was kind of tacked on as an afterthought.

I disagree that removing it would unbalance the game in the other direction unduly, though... Tien Chi has excellent sacred summons and a dynamic capital only mage, Atlantis and Ryleh are effectively unassailable for the first part of the game, these things are very good even in the absence of clamming.

I would however agree that the BEST thing to do (as upposed to simply excising the items in question) would be to add some additional constraints to these strategies as has been suggested by plenty of very smart people in this thread. Simple things like making them mage-only items and eliminating vampire lord summon allies ability would be welcome changes that might result in a common ground being found between those who think clamming is too strong and those who think its just fine.

[Boron]

Soapyfrog said:
I would however agree that the BEST thing to do (as upposed to simply excising the items in question) would be to add some additional constraints to these strategies as has been suggested by plenty of very smart people in this thread. Simple things like making them mage-only items and eliminating vampire lord summon allies ability would be welcome changes that might result in a common ground being found between those who think clamming is too strong and those who think its just fine.

Yeah some imo nice modifications would be :
- Leave clams as they are . But make them stockable only on mages or at least not on scouts which can't be targeted by flames / seeking arrows etc. .
- Remove a few allysummons and give them instead the ability to summon one special unit with a small bonus if that is possible .
A soul contract would give the possessor e.g. 20% discount on summoned devils and a vampire lord would get 40% discount on bloodrite or get +x vampires as a bonus when doing this special ritual .

Vampires and devils are both top 5 troops . Because of the get 1 / turn per allysummoning vampire lord / soul contract they become a bit too cheap and so they are really first choice for all nations who can afford them .
There is really nothing else which is similiar powerful which you can get out so quick and with little effort .

Only a wraithlord is similiar because he has too autosummon . The only other troop you can get in quite big quantities quite cheap is the vine ogre . But a vine ogre is only a living wall while a devil beats almost every other troop and can be dangerous to thugs too .

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
- Leave clams as they are . But make them stockable only on mages or at least not on scouts which can't be targeted by flames / seeking arrows etc. .

This wouldn't make any difference, because I'm going to have 50 mages researching in my capital underneaeh several domes by the time I have 100 clams anyways.

[Boron]

Graeme Dice said:

This wouldn't make any difference, because I'm going to have 50 mages researching in my capital underneaeh several domes by the time I have 100 clams anyways.

Hm but this would perhaps make dome wars a bit more interesting . If you bombard the domes with dozens of cheap spells like seeking arrow and at the end of the spellcastchain include a few fires i think this would be funny