[Pocus]

Originally posted by Ctennyson:
With Master Alchemist + Alchemist Stone, its 30 gp per Earth Gem and 45 per fire gem.

Last Ulm game I had Earth Blood Deep Well and Eternal Pyre both running, along with Fata Morgana and Riches from Beneath for huge income/resources. In my best castle, I could pop out a Knight Lord and 24 Knights a turn, not to mention at least 10 knights(the mounted ones) at every other castle, every turn, with 1000's of gold left over. Obviously thats SP, in MP no one will let you have every enchantment, so you'd need the fever fetish strategies which arent as visible.

Build Blood Stones and Fever Fetishes instead of clams, and you'll be swimming in cash.

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

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 . 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).