How do you spend your Gems in the early-mid game?
 

Here is the list of things that I commonly use my gems for. I think ( and I could be wrong ) that most of these are cost effective.

Fire: Lightless Lanters, fire brands, charcoal shields, shields of gleaming gold, shadow brand, gems for flaming arrows

Air: Not much, maybe staff of storms. I usually just wait until conj-8 for the queens, which is a long time to wait.

Water: Frost Brands, Boots of quickness, Swords of quickness, Jade armor, Clams ( maybe )

Earth: Earth boots, Troll courts, fire brands, shadow brands, hammers

Astral: Luck pendants, AMA, starshine skull caps, maybe angels

Nature: Vine Ogres, Rings of regen, reinvig items, Eye shields, globals like GoH.

Death: Banelords, Wrath Swords, shadow brand, maybe wrathlords, maybe a lich or two, banefire archers can be very deadly.

Blood: lots-o-summons. Devils, Death Knights, Ice Devils, Storm Demons, Archies, Hell swords, blood stones, just great stuff.

What I notice is that, with the exception of blood and to a lesser extent death, there are not a lot of summons on the list. It seems that items dominate the list.

So what do you guys spend gems on?

Re: How do you spend your Gems in the early-mid game?
 

Aren't shadow brands death/earth?
Pretty similar, but of course some nationals make a pretty huger difference.

Re: How do you spend your Gems in the early-mid game?
 

In addition to the ones that you put down

Air: mist, storm, wind guide, arrow fend. (i feel very defensless without air.)

Astral: eye of the void

fire/water: rune smashers

earth: the greatest anti super combatant weapon - Gate Cleaver

nature: swarm can come in handy at times.

Re: How do you spend your Gems in the early-mid game?
 

Well, I just found a few more:
All paths: Site Searches
Seeking Arrows, Teleports, Black Servants, mid game sevral mass-type nature spells.

Re: How do you spend your Gems in the early-mid game?
 

What about gem generator spells? Mother Oak at the very least. I suppose the others could be considered late-game only.

Re: How do you spend your Gems in the early-mid game?
 

I agree with the gem spending choices so far, some additional ones:-

Air: Cloud Trapze, Fog Warriors, Phantasmal Army, Air Elementals (usually via Living Clouds), the fantastic air magic air bows, eye of aiming, call of winds(sieging, fast gem/magic item carriers), great eagles, watchers, hurricane, shimmering fields.

Astral: Ring of sorcery, wizardary.

Nature: Gift of reason.

Earth: Gargoyle.

Re: How do you spend your Gems in the early-mid ga
 

Blood: Hoard from Hell, Rain of Toads - honestly I think these are my two favorite blood spells. Of course there are lots of uses for blood slaves...

Earth: Weapons of Sharpness - can be cast by an e2 guy, summon earth power plus a few gems (bonus - he can follow that up with strength of giants and legion of steel)

Astral: Power of the spheres (*great* with communion + light of the northern star). Nobody mentioned Mind Hunts?

Death: Another one nobody mentioned that I spend a lot of gems on - skull mentors! Shadow blast is great mid game.

Nature: amulet of barkskin - surprisingly effective for thugs in combination with decent armor given the price and research level.

Re: How do you spend your Gems in the early-mid ga
 

This one is a big one for me: Air- bows for commanders, scripted to fire rear.

Re: How do you spend your Gems in the early-mid ga
 

In the 3 mp games I am playing:

Alpaca-Pangaea-1st spell i put up-mother oak

Epic Heroes-Shinuyama-1st spell i put up-Well of Misery

Big Game-MA Ctis-ruthlessly attacked the whole game so

Death-bane lords, gems for shadow blast

Water-boots quickness, frost brand, bottles of water, rime hauberk

Nature-boots, ring regen, amulets

Astral-spell focus, luck pendants, s1 boosters,

fire n/a

Earth n/a

air n/a

The spell I would most like to get up-haunted forest

Re: How do you spend your Gems in the early-mid ga
 

I recently started spamming spells like blight, hurricane, and the locust thing, and I love it. love love love it. Hit somebodies capital with all three and you can cost them something like 500-1000 gold in a turn.

So, earth, air, and nature.

Re: How do you spend your Gems in the early-mid ga
 

Spamming even one of them at the enemy's capital works. They rise unrest, and once unrest is over 100 (10 castings of any one of them will raise it way above 100) they can't recruit from their capital. It's a nasty tactic.

Re: How do you spend your Gems in the early-mid ga
 

Spamming spells on enemy capitals is a luxury. If you are 1 fighting 3-4 other nations, you may need every gem for thugs/outfitting thugs to defend your own provinces.

If your opponent is using summoned troops to a large degree,
spamming spells on his capital may not be effective. It is always fun though!

Re: How do you spend your Gems in the early-mid ga
 

You might think it is a luxury, but early in the game, thugs don't really exist. Those spells do.

Re: How do you spend your Gems in the early-mid ga
 

I agree. The spells, including rain of toads, are excellent spells. Many times, however, I just cannot afford to spare the gems, especially if i am saving for mother oak or some other global.

Re: How do you spend your Gems in the early-mid ga
 

I occasionally like to spam the spell "maggots". It works really well in games where I'm playing nature against, say, Ashen Empire.