Clamming & piles of commanders -- how about a different approach?

[Poopsi]

It does change the game. You can slay clamming commanders. You cant slay a site.


I agree with the proposal of random events creating sites, through (like the corpse one).

And, possibly, I´d like to see more kinds of buildables.

PD: and on that note: I WOULD like the spells "Mother Oak", "Maelstrom", and the like to create a magic site. So that you have an alternative to dispelling it, particularily if you cant dispell.

[NTJedi]

Originally Posted by Loren

How about a spell that can be cast in a province that creates/upgrades a magic site. The cost would be similar. A site can't be killed by it can't run away, either.

I also think there should be versions that create each gem type (but probably not blood slaves.)

It would have to be upgrading a magic site because creating a magic site has unbalanced concerns since most players would most likely want to cast this spell on their capital province and some nations are already maxed out with 4 magic sites.

Probably the best way to decrease micro-management of clams would be having the amount of forgable clams limited to 10 per nation. Then each clam has an upgradable forging option which produces one more pearl, the clams can be continously upgraded but each upgrade costs more and more gems. This reduces the micromanagement and reduces the mass clam spamming seen within games.


Unfortunately all these ideas will have to wait for DOM_4, except the CtrL-Z on all gems... that sounds relatively simple to adjust and seems like a good idea.

[AreaOfEffect]

Most of the time I don't find clamming to be a lot of micromanagement. I generally have commanders doing nothing but researching anyhow. They are always by a laboratory and so they always can drop off their gems and store away the clams whenever I want them to.

I suppose its a "pain" if I have nothing left to research and you want your casters out in the field, but the upkeep cost of one scout more then outweighs the two astral gems they can generate by hiding in my capitol. I don't really see any issues here.

I seriously hope your not individually depositing the astral gems. That would be crazy as all you need to do is press F7 and pool the gem type you want taken off commanders at laboratories.

[Psycho]

I remember that you couldn't put two clams on a commander and generate two gems, but maybe that's changed. The F7 thing is useful only if you don't have any commanders in the same province with astral gems scripted to cast some battlefield spells. If you do, than it's risky using F7 because you can easily forget to give them gems back. But you can do the same thing with blood slaves, so why shift+z there?

[Loren]

Originally Posted by Poopsi

It does change the game. You can slay clamming commanders. You cant slay a site.


I agree with the proposal of random events creating sites, through (like the corpse one).

And, possibly, I´d like to see more kinds of buildables.

PD: and on that note: I WOULD like the spells "Mother Oak", "Maelstrom", and the like to create a magic site. So that you have an alternative to dispelling it, particularily if you cant dispell.

But you can capture a site, whereas claims a stealth commander are going to be hard to kill.

[Loren]

Originally Posted by AreaOfEffect

Most of the time I don't find clamming to be a lot of micromanagement. I generally have commanders doing nothing but researching anyhow. They are always by a laboratory and so they always can drop off their gems and store away the clams whenever I want them to.

I suppose its a "pain" if I have nothing left to research and you want your casters out in the field, but the upkeep cost of one scout more then outweighs the two astral gems they can generate by hiding in my capitol. I don't really see any issues here.

I seriously hope your not individually depositing the astral gems. That would be crazy as all you need to do is press F7 and pool the gem type you want taken off commanders at laboratories.

1) Each month you have to forge the clam, recruit the scout and transfer the clam to him. Whereas if it upgrades a site you can set the caster to monthly, no further action needed.

2) The one problem with F7 is that it takes gems away from those who need them as well as from your clam-holders.

[Dragar]

I personally think the game would be a lot better with clamming removed altogether - too many overpowering end game strategies result from it

[Meglobob]

I am not too sure why people hate clams so much.

I have played alot of MP, perhaps 40+ games and only 2 of those games have clams resulted in a huge advantage. Both those games were played by the same player Evilhomer. In one as MA Oceania he conquered all the seas on the Glory of the Gods map, which is obviously alot of sea provinces, allowing him the resources to clam hugely. The other was the 1st megagame when he played La Rlyeh (a overpowered nation anyway) when again he conquered a huge sea area got to 5 wishes a turn. In all other 38 MP games, clams played no or little part and were probably a waste of resources. So where is the problem?

A clam costs 15W 5N, 11W 3N with a hammer. So even with a hammer it takes 15 turns before you see a 1 gem profit. You also sacrifice whatever you could have done with those W/N gems and well W gems are not hugely useful, N gems are always scarce.

Also, no clams or nerfs to clams destroys Ea/Ma Oceania and makes it virtually unplayable with any chance of winning.

I think clams have a over inflated reputation. That is not really deserved.

[mighty_scoop]

I don't like them too ... it's because of the large amount of micromanagement you need for it ... it's just not my preferred style of playing