Are devils worth 7 blood each?

[Boron]

Pickles said:

The difference is that after 5 or 10 provinces or whatever you can expand no more - it is bounded.

Pickles

Yeah and gold income tends to decrease in the long run because a lot of nations have death scales + random events / spells .
4 elephants + 16 Hypaspists are not bad but normally with each province you conquer you will lose at least 1-2 Hypaspists or sometimes one elephant . So if you can conquer 5 provinces with this force is already good but on indeps 7-9 at least i doubt that .

And a SC can conquer those provinces without upkeep or if it is a recruitable SC ( Jotunheim ) goldwise significantly cheaper . And he doesn't lose his value mid-lategame as your hypaspists + elephants do .

Pickles said:
The difference is that after 5 or 10 provinces or whatever you can expand no more - it is bounded.

It's only bounded by the size of the map. I can apply my Elephant Investment Strategy to other players' provinces as well as independents (in fact, my ROI might increase because the defenses in such province will - on average - be weaker than, say, size 6 Indeps).

Or are we taking enemy action into account now? We certainly weren't in the previous calculations.

Mark

[Soapyfrog]

Mark the Merciful said:
Or are we taking enemy action into account now? We certainly weren't in the previous calculations.

Naturally not. Your clam/fetish/stone/contract-holding scouts are quite safe from enemy action unless your empire has been completely overrun.

It's already been stated that fighting is detrimental to a clam-hoarding strat.

Military expansion, on the other, requires you to fight, and fighting reqires a continual investment or resources, AND your ROI is much less sure and much harder to calculate (if it goes badly your ROI could be quite negative! ) In short military expansion is a much riskier "investment".

[CUnknown]

I think there isn't a major problem with the way things are now, but a small tweak like clams are only equippable on mages sounds reasonable. Who could object to that? All it does is limit the extreme clamming strategy (abuse?) where you have hundreds and are making more each turn. It does nothing to discourage a moderate to heavy investment in clams.

Also, I'd like to see the life given from lifedrain capped at the user's normal hitpoint maximum and/or another magic item added that gives protection from lifedrain (soul protection pendant or the like).

[The Panther]

Actually, the single best solution to clam hoarding would be to make water magic useful.

For a start, they ought to eliminate the inability of casting water magic on both land and water. Make water spells unique in that they all could be cast either land or water. Excepting the auqatic or land summons, of course.

But really, why on earth can niefel flames not be cast underwater? You spend all that mage time as Atlantis getting to level 9 and can't even use it in your most powerful dominion of your home territory.

As it stands, water gems are most useful for turning into astral via clams.

[Cainehill]

The Panther said:
Actually, the single best solution to clam hoarding would be to make water magic useful.

For a start, they ought to eliminate the inability of casting water magic on both land and water.

Yep. It always strikes me as wrong that air spells are more useful for underwater combat than water spells are. Lightning, orb lightning, etc, can be used on land or underwater, while many of water's direct damage spells ... can't be cast underwater. That's just so wrong...

Same thing with rituals. If Voice of Apsu can be cast on a land province, from another land province, why can't it be cast on the land province from an underwater lab?

And artifacts and magic items - with the exception of the Orb of Atlantis, there are none that require more than Water-3, and 20 water gems.

[The_Tauren13]

I think the best suggestion to change clams is to make it a command that has to be given to whoever is wearing it: a "use item" command that would simply make 1 asral gem/turn. That way, your little scouts sitting around wont be able to hide and use them at the same time. Yes yes, i know what some people might say: "but it wont make any difference; i can just use domes!". Well, maybe it wouldnt make a BIG difference, but i dont think anyone is asking for a big change, just a change. It would definitely make some difference in that clam hoarding wouldnt be totally indestructable like it is now, and at least an opponent would be able to do something to kill off your clam income.

Now don't get me wrong; i don't support a change, i was just expressing my opinion about which suggestion was best. Personally, i think clams are fine as they are. The main reason people use them is not that they are overpowered, but because there is little else useful to do with water gems, like Panther and Cainehill were saying.

[Cohen]

Domes aren't totally protective as hiding is (nor Hiding is totally protective from some spells like Mind Hunt, but to cast it usually you should know that there's someone in that province, and a lone S1 mage will feeblemind your S4+ mage, even if it's S10 he'll get feebleminded).