[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Torvak:
I came to believe it's random. In my current game i have 4 enchantments up with 300 extra gems each and still dispel one of my own when casting a fifth. I doubt the AI spent 300 extra.

One trick I found useful is to stair-step your enchantment casts: The first GE I'll cast, I'll ram a solidly excessive 800 into it. Then the next one I throw up, I'll only toss in maybe 650, then 500, then 400, etc.

The fact that the subsequent enchantments you throw up are weaker than previous ones will make sure they're probably too understrength to be able to push out your existing ones, so will overwrite the AI's instead. The AI won't throw enough weight into anything to outgun this, so this will nearly always work.

In MP, take all of the figures given above, and do the following: If score graphs are visible, then do an eyeballing on your gem income vs. the enemy's gem income, and then use more than your opponent will likely have. If his gem income is better than yours, then don't bother pumping it. You'll get dispelled if he wants to no matter what you do.

If score graphs are disabled, take the above figures I gave (300-800), and multiply by the following formula base*(sites / 75.0) * (turn / 25) * players/3.

So for your first launch, in a sites-55 game on turn 38, with 6 players, the amount of gems you should use is equal to 800*(55/75)*(38/25)*2 = 1783 gems.

Too much, you think? Then you must not care very much about your enchantment sticking. Don't bother pumping it at all, then. Hell, don't even bother casting it, if it's going to harm anyone. It'll just get dispelled. If you're gonna go, go all out. Anything worth doing is worth doing with excessive force. Do it the right way. Do it the Norfleet way.