are stealth units targeted by flames from afar..?

[Boron]

Your experience differs greatly from mine.

I have yet to be in a game decided by clamhoarding, nor by choice of nation.

IMO, the most important factors are, in order:
-skill/knowledge of players involved, in particular regarding early expansion, strategic development of the nation played (design, research goals...) & battlefield tactical performance.
-diplomacy.
-starting location & map choice.

yeah sure . but starting location + map choice you can't influence .
surely an unskilled player who only clamhoards looses .
but a skilled player designs a good god too and knows what to research + battle tactics .
since clams are extremely cheap , only construction 2 so clamhoarding as a sidestrategy is good .
if you survive until lategame and have clamhoarded this becomes really a key factor .
lots of good clamhoard nations like pythium + arco are already strong without and clamhoarding doesn't need much effort . it is almost a "no-brainer" .

i agree that diplomacy is one of the most important factors in dominions . but a good player does this too.

i want to point out that i think 2 things are a bit too strong :
- not clams themselves but that they can't be destroyed by strategic measures like flames from the sky when they are hoarded on hidden stealth leaders .
- a critical mass of vampire lords + vampires . lategame you can even pick battles via stygian paths .
you have to fight these immortal armies endless when you attack a strong blood nation in mid-lategame because they always have friendly dominion while you have to defeat every other enemy army only once ( expect demiliches + wraith lords + vq + the other immortal pretenders but they are all either unique or too expensive / need equipment which is still lost ) .
vampires need no equipment to be brutal when you reach a critical mass .

sure an army with lots of wither bones / holy pyre casters + a staff of storm can defeat a vampire horde easy . but this is one of the really few armies which have good odds defeating 300-500 vampires without at least losing 20% of their own troops . against these special armies you counter then via e.g. storm demons + a few scs ( pazuzu e.g. ) .

finally : you can easy say you have seen no game won by clams because you don't see clams in the gem income scoregraph and don't see the enemy stealth units hoarding them too . so it is hard to tell if the winner hasn't clamhoarded too and this ensured in lategame his supremacy .

More games are won without clamhoarding than with by a large degree. Too many people have been influenced by the horror stories of people who have either cheated or play lactic games.

Or feel that their SP tactics can work in MP. Of course, maybe in games of negligable and variant skill levels, such things are much more common than where you can afford to waste your time/resources for a 10 turn return.

[Boron]

More games are won without clamhoarding than with by a large degree. Too many people have been influenced by the horror stories of people who have either cheated or play lactic games.

Or feel that their SP tactics can work in MP. Of course, maybe in games of negligable and variant skill levels, such things are much more common than where you can afford to waste your time/resources for a 10 turn return.

yeah sure but imho ( and one of the most experienced / best players who norfleet still is though he cheated shared this opinion too ) you have little other uses for water gems as nonunderwater nation .
you can forge a few boots of quickness , use some sea troll kings courts and 5 water are needed for a jade armor . but this is already almost everything else where it is good to spend water on .
so you gather a big surplus of water gems with many nations and then clam hoarding is the most profitable investition . producing 1-2 clam(s) / turn from midgame on doesn't hurt you but help you greatly . so lategame this is a huge advantage .

i am sure that most skilled players clamhoard and i don't believe you if you say you don't build clams with all your excess water gem income when you can build clams .

i still claim that clamhoarding is almost a "no-brainer" when you can do this with your nation .

[Pickles]

You can analyse all you like but until you have played a significant number of games the analysis is likely to differ from real play experience. Took me 15 years to figure this out but there you are.

Quoting Wendigo
"IMO, the most important factors are, in order:
-skill/knowledge of players involved, in particular regarding early expansion, strategic development of the nation played (design, research goals...) & battlefield tactical performance.
-diplomacy.
-starting location & map choice."

In my very limited experience the most important things I have found are

- Achieving a basic level of competence in the nation you are playing
- Diplomacy
- Winning battles
- Learning to transition from creeping to playing real enemies
- Map position

Hmm these are actually pretty close to yours Wendigo

It is hard to credit Norfleet with any real play ability but I too think the high level water spells are not very good.

Pickles

I don't build clams with my 'excess' water gems. Mostly because I rarely have an 'excess' water gem supply. It's invariably being used. (Note: I don't have a philisophic reasoning for not using Sea King's Court, Murdering Winter, Ice Elementals, Wolven Winter, and if possible Water Queens)

You can not believe it all you want, but thats the way it is. I have and will continue to build clams if I have a need for them (with Atlantis for example) but rarely do I go for a clamhoard as I detailed in my TC guide.

I'm sure you can't find it concievable at all; but there it is. Clamhoarding is a red herring that is going to keep getting newbies killed over and over again by wasting their right now resources for turn 50 peace of mind. This isn't to say that there are not that many good upper end summons for Water Magic and that that could be changed. But with the sheer amounts of Jade Armor I tend to go through, having water gems is usually critical to 2/3's my games.

[alexti]

yeah sure but imho ( and one of the most experienced / best players who norfleet still is though he cheated shared this opinion too ) you have little other uses for water gems as nonunderwater nation .
you can forge a few boots of quickness , use some sea troll kings courts and 5 water are needed for a jade armor . but this is already almost everything else where it is good to spend water on .
so you gather a big surplus of water gems with many nations and then clam hoarding is the most profitable investition . producing 1-2 clam(s) / turn from midgame on doesn't hurt you but help you greatly . so lategame this is a huge advantage .

Consider several possible situations:
- you're fighting non-cold resistant nation. Wolven Winter+ Murdering winter are very efficient, especially against opponents that rely on a mass of mages in the battles. This combo is quite costly though, so you're not likely to have any spare.
- you're SC intensive nation. Then you need *a lot* of boots of quickness and jade armors. In this case you'd want to have a lot of antimagic amulets and eitheri lucky coins or pendant of luck. This means that you need about 2 astral per one water, so I'd typically try to forge few clams to have such a ratio of gem income.
- if you're land nation and you're near the water, you want Sea Trolls and Water Queens (if you can get them in time), which again means water gems.

This leaves clam-hoarding strategy restricted to special cases. For example, if you're stuck in the corner, with nearby nations tough for you (Marignon for Ermor, or 2 allied nations for anybody), clam-hoarding (and any gem producing items -hoardig) is a good way to grow power without expanding. Atlantis vs land nations is essentially the same situation: difficult to wage aggressive war and easy to defend.

[The_Tauren13]

the problem is imho you are not very competetive in mp lategame when you can't do one of the 3 things good :
- bloodhunt largely (mictlan , abysia )
- clamhoard largely (especially r'leh , atlantis , ermor , arco , pythium )
- forge extreme cheap (ulm)

some nations can't do anything of the 3 good , e.g. machaka , vanheim , man

whats wrong with FFing as machaka?

about the soul contract...
once you give it to one commander, can you go and give it away to another? this wouldnt make sense thematically

[Arryn]

about the soul contract...
once you give it to one commander, can you go and give it away to another? this wouldnt make sense thematically

AFAIK, you can (but I'm not certain). Logically, it should be a CURSED item and thus unremovable except via the owner's death. Thematically, the contract should be a cursed item. Isn't selling your soul a curse (of the worst sort)?

[Sheap]

Logically, it should be a CURSED item and thus unremovable except via the owner's death.

Soul Contracts are cursed, and horror marked too.

[Arryn]

Soul Contracts are cursed, and horror marked too.

Makes sense. Being a Horror-magnet will speed your doom, fulfilling the contract sooner. If the devs had wanted to be really nasty, they should also make the contracts reduce the owner's MR to zero, adding yet more insult to injury.