Arcane Nexus

[don_Pablo]

Originally Posted by Finalgenesis

Hmmm theoretically speaking, arcane corruption looks like a pretty good counter to arcane nexus, you may even be able to spin it that way and not attract the wrath of the mob.

Consider how easily you can amass virgins with a blood nation, you should have no problem replacing a random global and putting up a big AC, though if you overwrite AN that would be hilarous and definitely get you mobbed.

AN is often followed by Armageddons to stop blood-hunting.
No population - no virgins .

[Finalgenesis]

Taking away people's virgins should be banned (Unless they are other people's virgins of course)!

Never knew that AC can be dispelled with 30 base cast dispel no matter how many slaves you pump in though.

AC seemed like a counter in that it's even more incentive for players not to cast/forge, so AN shouldn't rake in too much? Or that it would slightly deter the AN player's casting, though certainly won't impact any of his astral mage with returning scripted, e.g. he can still cast wish with impunity.

Is AN + wish 1-2 punch doable under CBM without clams? I've never finished a MP game yet so I have no feel for these things, I suppose alchemizing should do it though, I'm probably just naturally hesitant to use alchemy.

[chrispedersen]

Only the base spell can be dispelled with 30.
it follows the normal rules of dispel.

CBM made astral a lot weaker, not having clam whoring for wishing, AN etc.

You can pretty routinely get 75 gems a turn with a good size game mid to late game.

[Finalgenesis]

ah okay, thought blood enchantment doesn't follow the normal rules on dispel/overwrite for a moment there.

a good powered AC would be pretty hard to get rid of in CBM, given how easy it is to get lots of blood and no clamming.

[Micah]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

CBM made astral a lot weaker, not having clam whoring for wishing, AN etc.

Singling out astral magic is incredibly misleading. Astral is only weaker inasmuch as all of the non-blood magic in the game is weaker. Due to alchemy and wish mechanics the removal of clams DOES NOT have an appreciable effect on pearl availability *in relation to other gem types*. E and F gems, otoh, do become harder to procure for much of the game (until wish is unlocked.)

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Micah

Singling out astral magic is incredibly misleading. Astral is only weaker inasmuch as all of the non-blood magic in the game is weaker. Due to alchemy and wish mechanics the removal of clams DOES NOT have an appreciable effect on pearl availability *in relation to other gem types*. E and F gems, otoh, do become harder to procure for much of the game (until wish is unlocked.)

Sorry Micah - you're wrong.

The lack of clams drastically decreases the availability of pearls, especially early.

Can you compensate by alchemizing gems - sure but at a cost that did not exist in the vanilla game.

Clams made bootstrapping in astral - skullcap, astral coin, ros, row a viable strategy. It can still be done - but at a cost to (for example) your thug or SC forging.

Certainly, earth and fire were also affected. But to say all nonblood magic is just not right. Water and nature are certainly not less available - if anything they are more available (no clamming).

I think it is also fair to say that clamming was more widely practised than either blood stones or fever fetishes. Blood stones more or less are precluded for most water nations, for example; and I generally only identify a handful of weaker nations practice FF'ing.

In short - the ratio of other gems
a) does not apply to water, nature.
b) is not as commonly expressed in bloodstones and fever fetishes
c) is not the only relevent metric. Summons such as rudras, siddhe's etc, and forging like ROW do not depend on ratios but rather on raw numbers. Reducing the raw numbers of gems delays the introduction of these items and summons into the game.
Pearls increase your raw gem production (invisibly); and were a good investment. Strategies which therefor require a lot of pearls are therefor strongly affected.

Do you really mean to argue that R'lyeh (MA or LA) is not much worse off under CBM than under vanilla, solely considering the change to gem generators?

[Micah]

The alchemy cost that you claim didn't exist in vanilla is built into the basic game economy. One pearl = 2 gems once you unlock wish, which was fairly trivial with clams. Alchemy provides the same economy in reverse, but is available from the start of the game, and thus pearls are always available for the same 2:1 rate you get later. Unless you want to argue that unlocking wish nerfs astral magic since it's then so much better to wish away all your pearls into other gems?

Having to give up other options in order to get boosters is due to the tighter gem economy in general, not anything specific to S. Previously the inefficiency in using pearls for things was eclipsed by the sheer size of the game economy, now that things are tighter it's easier to notice the true cost of different options.

Clever little bait and switch there with your question about R'lyeh. R'lyeh, being aquatic and (I believe) having W cap income is, of course, hurt by clams being removed, since they get stuck with a pile of crappy W gems at a higher rate than other nations. They might also be a more gem-dependent nation in general, and obviously have a hard time breaking into blood, none of this translates into a direct nerf to astral magic.

I don't think anyone's going to argue that W magic got stronger due to the change, so I'm not sure what you're getting at with your comment about those gems being more available. W obviously took a pretty serious hit, although its main use (being turned into S gems) remains via alchemy and the Maelstrom global.

As for your 3 points: A is specifically covered by alchemy, B is a side point, and C is the reason you're looking at this wrong. If C dictates that something is a bad investment now then it was a bad investment before, you just had enough gems to not notice...if you've got a billion dollars shelling out 20 bucks for a happy meal isn't gonna even register to you, and is probably worth it instead of haggling over the price and wasting your time, but you still got ripped off. "Strategies that require a lot of pearls" basically boils down to "strategies that are inefficient but require less micro due to using fewer bigger, but ultimately less cost effective units."

And yes, I'm not gonna go so far as to say there's absolutely zero effect, there's gonna be some residual stuff due to overhead and delays in getting to wish and various opportunity costs, so there's some effect on S magic. On the other hand having a soul slay kill an opponent's SC hurts a lot more when they have 5 and not 50 of them running around, so it's a bit hard to say which side comes out on top in that debate. I think it's certainly too close to call, and even if it took a slight hit it's too minor to warrant all this screaming about a supposed S nerf. It's simply not the case in my mind. I used a hell of a lot of alchemy in the games I've played since CBM came out though.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Micah

The alchemy cost that you claim didn't exist in vanilla is built into the basic game economy. One pearl = 2 gems once you unlock wish, which was fairly trivial with clams.

I never said alchemy never existed. However, to say that cmb didn't nerf astral because wish exists is ignoring the 2/3'rds of the game before you *unlock* wish.

And most positions are lost WAY before you have wish.

Having to give up other options in order to get boosters is due to the tighter gem economy in general, not anything specific to S.

We agree on the facts. Gems are tighter as there are no gem generators. And more specifically S gems are tighter, as there are no clams. As you have no gems, each S action you must take becomes more expensive.

Instead of having 30 astral income on turn 20 - fairly easy in a vanilla game - you might have 10. That makes your availability of doing things like magic duel, gate etc much more expensive.

Clever little bait and switch there with your question about R'lyeh. R'lyeh, being aquatic and (I believe) having W cap income is, of course, hurt by clams being removed, since they get stuck with a pile of crappy W gems at a higher rate than other nations. They might also be a more gem-dependent nation in general, and obviously have a hard time breaking into blood, none of this translates into a direct nerf to astral magic.

There is *no* bait and switch. You arguing astral magic didn't get weaker is ridiculous. Pick an astral nation. R'lyeh, Pythium. Kailasa. Whatever. EVERY single astral nation became weaker, by the nerf to gem generators.

In Rlyeh's case, having S mages and battle scripts and rituals that require S gems means the cost of doing those operations went up. Its not even arguable with a straight face.

Sure, you can alchemize two gems to make your make your pearl. now your magic duel is costing you *two* gems.

a) does not apply to water, nature.
b) is not as commonly expressed in bloodstones and fever fetishes
c) is not the only relevent metric. Summons such as rudras, siddhe's etc, and forging like ROW do not depend on ratios but rather on raw numbers. Reducing the raw numbers of gems delays the introduction of these items and summons into the game.
Pearls increase your raw gem production (invisibly); and were a good investment. Strategies which therefor require a lot of pearls are therefor strongly affected.

your 3 points: A is specifically covered by alchemy,

Alchemy has nothing to do with the point.

B is a side point,

So say you. Argued without support.

and C is the reason you're looking at this wrong. If C dictates that something is a bad investment now then it was a bad investment before, you just had enough gems to not notice...if you've got a billion dollars shelling out 20 bucks for a happy meal isn't gonna even register to you, and is probably worth it instead of haggling over the price and wasting your time, but you still got ripped off. "Strategies that require a lot of pearls" basically boils down to "strategies that are inefficient but require less micro due to using fewer bigger, but ultimately less cost effective units."

Ridiculous argument. So according to you we can just remove all astral gems from starting nations - since according to you gem income is irrelevent.

You're wrong on the face of it and trying puerile arguments to support it. You're the one that has it backwards.

Law of supply and demand says that if you remove supply, the item becomes more expensive. Removing a supply of pearls makes EVERY item purchased with pearls more expensive. So rudras became MORE expensive because you removed pearls. NOT the *inferior* value of rudras got revealed.

But even foraking that argument. The alchemy arguement is ridiculous - you can alchemize with generators as well as you can alchemize without them.

Forsaking *that* arguement - the facts are simple. With gem generators, you are more likely to turn pull of turn 20 gates.
you are more likely to pull of turn 30 ROW.

Every single astral option is now deferred due to lower 'cash flow', or scrutinized more closely due to 'higher cost'.

... and even if it took a slight hit it's too minor to warrant all this screaming about a supposed S nerf.

As for 'screaming' this was my entire original quote;

CBM made astral a lot weaker, not having clam whoring for wishing, AN etc.

Hardly screaming.

[Micah]

Wish is needed to turn pearls into OTHER gem types. Wish does not enter into the situation when you are converting TO pearls. I bring up wish because it means that the game considers pearls to be equal to two other gems, which is the same ratio you get from alchemy. Granted the equivalency doesn't appear completely until late game, but that's when clams have the most impact, so a minor quibble. The way alchemy works and gem valuation is why I brought up E and F as having taken harder nerfs, since you DO need wish to get those gem types without paying through the nose.

Um, your point B IS a side point, since we're talking about astral, not earth and fire.

I'm not convinced that S nations actually took the hit you're describing, although since they're almost all human nations they did lose some ground to nations with recruitable thugs, since thug/SC nations do better in a tighter gem economy. I don't think that has anything to do with magic flavor though, just that S nations tend to be human (and I already explained my objection to using R'lyeh as a metric.) In fact, in the last RAND game I was pretty hell-bent on avoiding fighting astral nations if at all possible, and lost something like 300+ gems and 5000g worth of stuff to a 4,000g communion of astral mages played by an inexperienced player. Maybe astral was even MORE powerful before, but it's certainly not hurting now.

As to the bottom section of your post, I have to toss off a quick "wtf" for some of the accusations and arguments you're making there. You do make a good point though, albeit by accident. You could go ahead and remove all pearl income from the game and it would not effect the true cost of astral magic, which is that each pearl you spend is the equivalent of two other gems. CBM doesn't change that, it just makes it obvious.

Granted, having a pile of pearls allows you to defer the extra cost until you could have wished the pearls away into gems, but sooner or later every pearl you spend is 2 gems you don't have, and I am posting from a game-winning mentality here, meaning you will most likely have access to wish by the end-game. (And I already admitted to there being a bit of a nerf in games that last long enough for clams to pay off but not long enough to get wish...that's a pretty narrow band though, and the clams really don't kick into high gear until around the time you can wish, so I consider the effects fairly minor.)

And the "screaming" comment was based on the consistent posting of the supposed astral "nerf" as fact across several threads, not because of this specific instance, or really the tone in any of them. I'm not sure if you are the author of all of the posts on the subject or not, but taken in aggregate I believe my comment was warranted, though perhaps mistargetted.

[Finalgenesis]

ChrisP please empty your PM box! I can't PM you cause it's full...