Are devils worth 7 blood each?

[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

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
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

Spells are cast in random order. You have no way to make your spells go in any particular order, and a proper set of domes only gives a 7% chance that any one spell will make it through.

[Boron]

Graeme Dice said:

Spells are cast in random order. You have no way to make your spells go in any particular order, and a proper set of domes only gives a 7% chance that any one spell will make it through.

Oh i thought you can influence the order
At least bringing them to fall by seeking arrows or similiar is cost effective

[Wendigo]

Graeme Dice said:
Spells are cast in random order. You have no way to make your spells go in any particular order, and a proper set of domes only gives a 7% chance that any one spell will make it through.

Graeme has a supberb knowledge of the game mechanics, but I believe he is wrong on this one:

Casting order is actually fully deterministic.

Every single trooper & commander in a Dominions game is tracked with an ID number (ranging from 1 to aprox 30,000) that is used to track experience, afflictions....
Spell casting orders (rituals+forging+battlefield spells) are resolved according to this number.

Back in Dom PPP you could use the debug screen to gather this data regarding your mages (& get the exact order in which spells would be cast), tho I believe this is no longer possible in Dom II. You can get some clues however if you pay atention.


This issue can & does decide games:
will you claim that Last unique commmander that just died or will you get a "Nobody answered the spell" because somebody else did?
will you forge that disputed artifact or will your opponent pull it instead?
Are you capable of getting your slaves to cast communion slave before their master runs through his script?
Will you burst the air dome with arrows & other cheapo spells before your MW/FFS have to roll vs it?
will you nail that teleporting SC with an assasination spell before he jumps away?

[odd_enuf]

for the soul contracts, making them give an extra 1-3 devils, when casting the summon devil spell, similer to the ivy crown, would help balance them. Giving 2 extra devils would make them pay off twice as fast, but you would still need a blood income to use them, along with mage time.

odd_enuf

[Huzurdaddi]

for the soul contracts, making them give an extra 1-3 devils, when casting the summon devil spell, similer to the ivy crown, would help balance them. Giving 2 extra devils would make them pay off twice as fast, but you would still need a blood income to use them, along with mage time.

I have to say that is a solid suggestion. But it makes devils an abysia only type of thing.