Tip: Template for reducing late game MM hell

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Illuminated One

But removing all gems will also. I'm not even very much opposed to removing hammers, but they are hardly a core problem. Unless of course everyone needs 3h only to hunt his hammers, but therefore working out where the time is wasted is much better than suggesting bans that can save some micro.

Yes, exactly! Gems themselves are a big cause of MM. In CBM summoning individuals demons is cheap - the logic being that the real cost is mage time, not blood slaves. If this logic could be extended to everything you could do away with gems. So aside from perhaps globals or unique items everything would be free (or as close to free as the game will allow). But the only way I can see to do that is to limit the number of mages and that drastically changes the balance and nature of the game (though it could make for a fun, quick playing, mod).

In addition to that, the game doesn't scale well. The more units you have, the more MM you'll have. If there was a way to have the game scale from x units at the beginning to 100x (instead of 1000x) then you could really reduce MM. The best you can do to simulate this is to have smaller maps with fewer players.

In the end, I think you can only change things around the periphery - the cause of the vast majority of MM is built into the game itself. I don't mean that to sound negative: trying to change the things that we can control is worthwhile but it won't solve the bulk of the problem.