I have a potentially stupid question.
Does anyone have an actual *experience* when clam "hoarding" broke an MP game?
Did this breakage occur before or after someone got to casting Wish? (Which is by definition, long tradition, and intuitively blatantly *intended* to break the game.
(Which is why it is fun?)
This is a design issue, again sepearte from clam hoarding as such.
The rate of return on clams is (geometrically) not very good, you would have to be in a remarkably passive game to have it be an optimal use of resources.
(Except insofar as there isn't that much to do with water gems as such... a known issue, but different from the hoarding one.)
I proposed in a thread some time ago that pearls be purchasable for 50g, and I'm not even sure *that* would break the game. (Wish excluded!)
Does anyone have any non-wish horror stories about clam MP disintergrations?
I think the problem may lie with wish and water gems, not clams. Clams just give uncreative people ways to use resources that are underutilized by the game.
Killing two phoenixes with one hand grenade, I think what we might do is let water gems have a low/med level pop renewal effect. This would create a different kind of problem (pop farming?) but I'm confident our thanatonic devs would keep it from being *unseemily* profitable
People who like clams very likely hate the very (non-geometric) idea of nonrenewable resources.
Might be fun, (and ultimately balancing!) to make them choose.
Might lessen the pressure for the builder types to hoard and it's easy to kill pop, it's very hard by comparision to take clams away from an opponent.
The actual numbers (gems---> pop) would depend on the tax rate (is it currently 1goldper 50 people>20000?) but it would, particularly if we fixed the instaovertaxing=free pillage and wish problems, make for a more interesting set of options.
Just a thought,
Rabe for Reasonable Renewal
[ May 04, 2004, 21:31: Message edited by: rabelais ]