Dev Thinking on Balance?

[Zapmeister]

There's been a heckuva lot of discussion over the Last few months on 2 balance issues, being:

1. The Vampire Queen; and
2. Clam Hoarding

I'm interested in knowing whether the devs have formed an opinion (or even a slight leaning) on either of these issues yet, and whether any related changes are planned for the next patch. Johan? Kristoffer?

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Zapmeister:
There's been a heckuva lot of discussion over the Last few months on 2 balance issues, being:

1. The Vampire Queen; and
2. Clam Hoarding

I'm on the fence regarding the clam hoarding, but ... Playing Atlantis I haven't seen anything to do with its water gems but make clams.

[Duncanish]

I thought the devs have already made it known that they don't see a problem with the way Clams are right now. Seems like you're beating a dead horse...

[Stormbinder]

I second that. These two issues are the only real unbalances in the current state of the game in my opinion, everything else is perfectly balanced, which is IMHO a huge archivement, considering how deep and complex this game is.

Although I would put it in reverse order:

1. Clam hoarding
2. VQ

VQ is certainly annoying but is just one unit after all. Clam hoarding can potentially have much larger impact on long MP games, therefore I think it has higher priority.

So what developers think about it, after all these long discussions regarding these two topics?

[Zapmeister]

I thought the devs have already made it known that they don't see a problem with the way Clams are right now. Seems like you're beating a dead horse...

The only thing I've seen is a comment from Kristoffer saying that he was still undecided on the clam issue. Could you provide a reference?

[Duncanish]

The topic has most likely been deleted by now. I remember it had gotten quite long. There were examples of how fast someone could get hundreds of clams available by a certain turn, arguments over how those examples weren't realistic, etc etc blah. I think it started out being a list of things people wanted in the next patch, but ended up being a shouting match about clams. But my opinion's still the same. Some people think clams are unbalanced. Others don't. Bringing this argument back into the forefront is beating a poor, dead horse. You don't hate horses, do you?