Re: Early game slingshot w/ alchemy
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Gift of Health ... </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That would help with the afflictions, but would it stop the scout from losing 1 HP per month? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes, when it cures the disease. Disease is an affliction.

EDIT: it also gives your units more HPs while in friendly dominion, so they'll Last longer if it takes a few months to get rid of the disease.

[ February 22, 2004, 18:51: Message edited by: Arryn ]

Re: Early game slingshot w/ alchemy
 

This whole "give disease causing item to units that can't be diseased" really sounds like an exploit to me... how can the heat of the sickness produce fire gems if there IS no sickness? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Re: Early game slingshot w/ alchemy
 

That's what I said. But it's also easy to circumvent in other ways - just more of a hassle to watch all your diseased scouts. I suppose if there were also a random chance of a sudden death, or if they were non-reusable, and the undead couldn't use them, then it would make more sense. It'd be nice if the gems earned automatically went to any local lab when the guy died, too, to avoid silly micromanagement moving gems all the time.

PvK

Re: Early game slingshot w/ alchemy
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The GoH doesn't prevent the sickness. It cures it afterwards. Get sick (& get gems), get healed, get sick (& get gems), get healed. Ad infinitum.

Re: Early game slingshot w/ alchemy
 

Playing Ulm I never had too many Fire and Earth Gems, forging and Construction "summons" eat up your gems steadily !
However Pocus described me a "financial" Alchemist strategy : with Nature & Fire a RB can forge a boatload of Fever Fetish (give' em to Scouts) producing many Fire gems, that you can sell for cash. Only problem is that this requires your RB himself to forgeing items, so you lose on research/site searching (that's what the guy should do else...)

Re: Early game slingshot w/ alchemy
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">What are you using to make sure you have the Nature gems? A Master Druid?

(Also, if you add Death you can give the Fever Fetishes to undead summons so you don't even have to lose upkeep and recruiting costs on scouts)

Re: Early game slingshot w/ alchemy
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">unless it has changed from dom1, the alchemy stone dont add +50% after master alchemist doubling, but add +50% on the base cost. Thus a fire gem is worth 37 gp, not 45.
Still a good deal, but for this strategy to work, you really need the alchemist, and not necessarly the philosopher's stone.

I generaly use scouts, but black servants is also a possibility if you have a death income.

This gem factory can be further enhanced with the forge of ancients, which allow master smith to forges the fetish, at 1 nature and 1 fire. You can easily comes with +4 to +6 fetish a turn, which lead to a net increase of 200 gp a turn. You should be able to reach 5000 gp worth of fire gems if nobody see you coming.

... And then you win http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

But dont misunderstand me, its not an exploit for me. its a valid and circumvoluted strategy, which asks for preparation and planning, in the same way that the making of a tartarian factory is a difficult strategy to pay off. Its one of the pleasure of the game to have a set of puzzle (jigsaw) pieces, and works his way to finish it before the others kill you http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif . As a sidenote, this is where dominions shines, in the same way that Master of Magic shined (circumvoluted combos to establish on the long term).

Re: Early game slingshot w/ alchemy
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">True for Undead commanders- these should not be able to use the Fetish...