[Rasorow]

Why do you only want resources in the Capital? I recruit armies everywhere. Heavy Calvary from here, archers from there, amphibians from over there, heavy infantry from another place, and other items like jade sorceresses and so forth. I generally have 2-3 armies of capital generated and a varying number of province generated armies. I find that province generated armies re-enforce quicker (closer to the front), make great leading invasion armies, great seige re-enforcements, great defensive armies, freeing my elite capital forces to deal with the counter attack to re-gain territory, siezing the main objective (already weakened by a province army), providing a hard nose to blunt the initial attack if needed. I generally have much more gold then resources and I dont have 10 turns that it takes to put a decent army together from one place when I can put together 3 armies by recuiting in 10 different places.

To me Riches from Beneath is a much preferred item then a ritual that will only benefit one province. Riches from Beneath just seems to me so much more powerful (that one spell turned a losing game into a devesating win for me the first time I used it) then the industry ceremony that I really dont understand why there is so much resistance to the industry ceremony idea. Unless of course you were to say Riches from Beneath was out of balance and over powered....

As far as money vs Gems for the ritual... simply increase the cost appropriately. Also realize that the pool of gold you are spending decreases the number of units you can buy to use those resources (not to mention building), so its self-limiting (because the resources dont linger - they are only there for that 1 turn). Where (although alchemy exists) there is no direct competition between the gems for magic rituals.

Rasorow

PS I really like the idea of seperating Priest powers from magic... Can you tell? ;-)