Alchemy - Converting Gems for Gold needs a better Rate
 

Dominions is known for a big amount of details which makes this game so exciting.

One of this details is the ability of every mage to make some money out of earth and fire gems (10/15 gold).

While somehow useful in dominions 2 the ability isn't really useable in dominions 3.
Mostly because of the fact that there is more gold in dom3 and you still get the same (dom2) amount for your gems.

Using a master alchemist pretender early in the game would be a nice strategy for the useable nations like ulm. But its not because of this rate!

Alchemist stone give you another bonus but again because of the low base rate you don't trade valuable gems for money at this point of the game (its mid/late game when reaching contruction 8).

So i pled for more money for your converted gems. I think it should be doubled or trippled to make it useable. In case of nations with master alchemist (primary ulm) it should be a possible strategy by making more early gold instead of using the gems for items.

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

Interesting proposal. I agree, right now 8 earth gems are WAY more valuable than 80 gold in the current game unless you are not balancing your checkbook or are otherwise desperately short on cash. (LA Ermor, and even then it's questionable.)

-Max

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

I did use the feature once, but I was very desperate for gold and in retrospect it was probably a bad idea regardless. I did wonder why it would be in there to begin with if it's so bad. I feel trading should be expensive, but worth it enough of the time to add something to the game.

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

I agree, I actually only use alchemy when I'm 20 or 30 gp away from being able to build a castle or recruit a capitol mage.

In a mp with Machaka, I had to alchemize a lot in a war against Man whode bards were spreeding unrest in half my realm ; and finally realised that as long my mages upkeep was paid it was better to alchemize for other gems my huge production and summon thugs than to alchemize for gold and recruit troops. For 24f alchemized in death you get a bane lord, and it's far more interesting than recruiting 360g of anything.

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

Alchemy would also be proportionately more valuable if you were playing with 25% or 50% gold multipliers.

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Odd. When I alchemize 24F gems, I get 12A, and then only 6D gems. Maybe I am doing it wrong? O.o Anyway takes me 48 of any gem type to get a Bane Lord, which is 720g, or a decent quality summons in its own right.

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

Why does the mage's upkeep matter? Commanders don't desert when unpaid (I'm about 90% sure of that but my memory is fuzzy) so this is only an issue if you want to buy more mages.

-Max

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

Commanders never desert. I ran a long test with EA Pangea with 0 income for many many turns and they never lost a Pan.

Jazzepi

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

Jazzepi is right and i agree with calmon, it was marginal in Dom2 and it just didn't get scaled up with the economy in 3.

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

Hum, yes. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif

In fact 720 g for a bane lord is rather expensive compared to 720g of good troops, it was only interesting because I didn't have money to pay upkeep for other troops (and my capitol had too much unrest to recruit my best ones iirc).

About mages upkeep I didn't knew as I always managed to have just the gold for my upkeep cost, it's interesting to know leaders can't desert (so finally you can completely ignore upkeep when you only use summons).

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

I totally agree.

Up until I read this thread I hadn't noticed how little I've used Alchecmy. Between the higher gold income in dom-III and the nerfing of fever fetishes, alchemy in dom-III has turned out to be not cost effective.

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

I also find that the gems I have in excess are not convertable. IE, if I'm playing a nation without water paths, the water gems are pretty much useless, but I never seem to have a mage that can covert these gems to gold or swap them out for other gems that I could use.

This may be out of date information because I quit even clicking on the alchemy button at least a year ago.

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

MA T'ien Ch'i alchemists receive a 50% bonus as well. You don't need any special pretender or something for that. It may really help early on but only when it's crucial to have a bit more gold.

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

What you can alchemize doesn't depend on the mage doing it. You can change gems into astral or astral into other gems, at 2:1 ratio, or fire or earth gems into gold, and that's all.

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

I meant alchemizing fire and earth for gold.
That's the thread topic, isn't it? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

The solution is simple - fire and earth gems should simply be worth more gold per gem.

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

I meant that for Edratman. "I never seem to have a mage that can covert [water] gems to gold" etc. It also doesn't hurt if any new people here know about alchemy, even if they haven't read page 91 of the manual.

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

I agree with raising the exchange rates on alchemy. Since Dom 2 money has simply become worth a lot less (just like in real life *sigh*). With armies becoming larger in general, you simply need much more gold to be competitive in the troop department, so it stands to reason that alchemical transmutation should be adjusted accordingly. It doesn't really make sense to have a feature that's basically useless because it wasn't updated along with everything else (I'm sure as hell not going to waste up to 4 gems of anything for 15 gold...) There's the matter of building prices, but that could be adjusted accordingly, if people think that's even an issue.

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

As well as increasing value of Fire and Earth, I think all gems should be transmutable for coin. Maybe for less than those 2 gems, but if it is made strategically viable, then it would kind of suck that only a few nations have starting gem income to make it possible in the early game where some would argue it was most useful. Taking EA Abysia as an example, 6F gems per turn, if it were bumped to 30g apiece, that's an extra 180g/turn if they decide to alchemize at the start to get a faster start. 4 turns of that is basically an extra fort, while someone who has no access to F gems has no viable option whatsoever in that department.

Actually, I'd probably say making F worth 30, S and E worth 25, and all others worth 20..... Would probably be a fair enough balance. Or you could say F/S/E 30, and all else 25, I don't care. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Though have to be careful, if you make it worthy for everyone, the 50% bonus could end up too powerful.

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

What if whenever a fire or earth gem was alchemized it gave some amount of gold and had a chance of giving you one of the other gems?

At that point the boost to alchemy could be split between the two options somehow which would mean that the increase in gold wouldnt multiply as heavily for them. Also, the alchemists stone could be made to be worthwhile! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

+1

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

Yeah, because EA Abysia is clearly a powerhouse already. Clearly we wouldn't want to overpower them. Better make Astral gems equal to the new, useful rate, because the Astral path, as we all know, is basically useless in the early game and quickly loses its appeal once you reach the end game. Perhaps one or two useful items and they're mostly cross-path, no SC buffs to speak of, and nothing else to use the gems for. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif


Gems to gold helps in the early game. It won't matter in middle and late, except if it helped you get there. Nations who get only or fire, only earth or some of both would benefit the most, of course. Nations such as EA/MA/LA Abysia, MA Ulm, EA/MA Agartha, MA Marignon, EA Atlantis. Most of them are considered weak. Honestly, I don't see why other gemtypes should be made equal.

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

Okay you're right, sarcasm aside, I didn't put much thought into that. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

I don't see any reason to have it equal other than laziness (on my part). It just irks me that you have these gems of pure crystallized magical essence, and there aren't people just crawling out of the woodwork to give you good money for them.

And no, I wasn't evaluating the worth of the gems in other game applications, I was only thinking Astral pearls would be worth better money because the essence is so pure. I see you complain about overvaluing the pearls, but you don't complain that perhaps water gems are undervalued, as I've seen numerous people state that water gems aren't as useful in the late game any others. Besides which, since pearls ARE so useful in the late game, wouldn't it stand to reason that convincing people to alchemize them for gold rather than wishing for Grigori (haha), is a good thing?

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

And another +1.

Even just boosting them to +20/+15 (F/E) would be a start and wouldn't affect balance much either, although I think it would have to be more than that to really make it useful. And has been pointed out most of the fire/earth nations tend not to be that strong anyway.

I assume this can't be modded but would need to be patched?

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

I think a doubled revenue is a good solution.

30 for fire and 20 for earth gems would boost the earth/fire based nations early game, feature some master alchemist pretenders and will also be a possible money make option in middle/late game combined with alchemist stone (if needed).

Its far away for being too strong and would add some nice new semi strategies.

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

Alchemy is not the same as selling on the free market. Apparently the alchemical process demands fire or earth gems and nothing else.

It would be interesting if you could research more efficient alchemical processes. What if there was an F4E4 spell at Conj-9 that cost 20 Fire gems and gave you 5000 gold?

-Max

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

A bump for KO and his empty inbox http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

I hope this manages to be added in the next patch. It likely fulfills the requirements for patching (being in demand & easy to do).

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

+1

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

+50% or +100% when alchemizing the gems seems fair.
A nice idea could be : include this ratio in the game settings, along with the magic site frequency and so on.

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

If alchemy is supposed to be a *process* of some kind... maybe we can make it more interesting by allowing you to use different combinations of gems.

So 10 earth gems gets you 1000 gold, but so does 4E4F, as does 1E1F1A1W1. Depending on which nations we wanted to help (Ulm comes to mind) we would set the combination accordingly.

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

Ooohhh, mysterious formulae could be fun. Such as converting Air+Fire to Water at a slightly better rate than normal, or perhaps Nature+Death to Earth, that sort of thing. And nothing too outrageous, just a bit better than 4-1 if you happen to have the right combinations.

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

Mysterious formulae is very good idea. Not sure whether it can be implemented under Alchemy command but it could be added as researchable spells as was already pointed out...

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

The idea of alchemical formulas is an incredibly cool idea in my opinion. That would be a very interesting line of expansion for future patches, broadening the alchemy system. Furthermore, I would like to see alchemy developed more, with some variation on gem exchange rates by nation, and other minor tweaks like that. As has been mentioned several times in this thread already, underpowered nations like MA Ulm who have the option of pretenders like the Master Alchemist could create a significant strategy around alchemy if they were given favorable exchange rates, on certain gem exchanges, and maybe even the option of different conversions rather than the standard strictly all gem types to astral and astral to all gem types. I'm not advocating being able to exchange anything for anything, but some slight expansion of options and maybe even a 3 for 2 exchange rate between earth and fire gems or some such advantage. Going along with the idea of alchemical formulas, nation specific formulas just like that could exist adding a new dimension to game play for some nations, particularly if there was further variation by era. And to be clear, I was just citing MA Ulm as an example of a nation that could certainly use a boost as it is frequently mentioned as one of the weakest nations in the game.

And on another random note, alchemical formulas could also be items that need to be forged so they could only be used when a mage has the item equipped. And rather than using the traditional alchemy system, the formula could give the mage a spell to cast that would consume x amount of various gems and give y amounts of various gems. That way, as alchemy is currently an instant action, the formula could only be used in a limited manner. On the other hand, if the idea is that all your mages are aware of the formula and can take advantage of it, than all well and good. Either system would add a new interesting aspect to the game.
Lastly, the Alchemist's Stone. The unique item never used by anyone that could suddenly become incredibly cool and ridiculously valuable if alchemy is expanded. Obviously a lot of cool things could be done with the stone, maybe even let one or two gem types be traded on a 1:1 basis, who knows?

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

It doesn't need to be a general tactic. I think of alchemy as a bit like some of those many, mostly useless summon spells.

You don't really want to do it, but in a crisis it's better to bite the bullet and do it than risk dying.

Re: Alchemy - Converting for Gold
 

This thing needs to be bumped again! :up:

Re: Alchemy - Converting Gems for Gold needs a better Rate
 

Is it on the bug shortlist yet?

Re: Alchemy - Converting Gems for Gold needs a better Rate
 

Nope but it itsn't a bug :).

Re: Alchemy - Converting Gems for Gold needs a better Rate
 

It seems to bug people. :p

Re: Alchemy - Converting Gems for Gold needs a better Rate
 

Its not a bug but its certainly an omission of a detail, alchemy, in the transition from dom-II economy to dom-III. Namely, the inflation in gold income should have effected alchemy rate accordingly which never happened.

Re: Alchemy - Converting Gems for Gold needs a better Rate
 

What he said.

Re: Alchemy - Converting Gems for Gold needs a better Rate
 

I've requested before that all gems, not just fire/earth, be alchemizeable, but Kristoffer seems dead set against it, and he has his reasons. I'm not sure if the same reasons would apply to increased gold for Earth/Fire, though.

Re: Alchemy - Converting Gems for Gold needs a better Rate
 

I'm also against it. :)

I just want fire/earth alchimize improved to be somehow useable in dom3.