[Pickles]

I think I agree with everyone here!
Late game your gem income can be far higher if you spam gem items than if not but you have to survive. Diplomacy can sometimes replace armies for this MP. These strategies give exponential growth while any other growth in the game is not exponential. In general late game admin means I am not interested in playing game with more than about 10 provinces each or 120 ish in total. PLus I prefer the early wars & using the whole of the tech tree. So while I do think the game is a bit flawed in way I think it is soluble without any code changes by choosing maps that suit me. Admittedly if I liked teching all the way before I attacked anyone I might have issues.

So to slightly drag this in another direction has anyone considered ULM spamming. I played one MP game and was able to get a Forge of the Ancients. This with a smith (or hammer) reduces the cost of a fever fetish to one fire & one nature gem & allows any mage to make them. It reduces clams to 3S if you can get a water (1) mage.
This is a 2 turn payback or worst case - alchemising fire into nature - 5 turn.

Now that is insane growth - too much to be bothered with for me after only 30 ish but it does not take long for that to be a ludicrous number of fetishes or clams. The fire gems can be alchemised to pay for scouts to carry them.

Around turn 30 when the forge is likely to be researched Ulm will have at least 30 smiths so even one turns use of the forge would allow 30 fetishes - adding 90 earth gems to the cost makes them 5 gems each. Or if you get 2 turns use 3.5 gems each. I think the forge saved me its cost almost every turn I had it up, it is grotesque but especially for spamming.

I also got contracts for 20 slaves (from an empowered smith) which makes the ROI very good, (& I did lose at least one to a horror attack). You can make this 10 for one smith if you use the unique hammer but it may need a second empowering.

Anyway there you have a truly horrible exponential micro hell of forging

Hmm lost the plot now

dum dum

Pickles