[Peter Ebbesen]

Forrest said:
No Peter it fires EVERY turn. That is the reason for the boots. Otherwise it would only be 5 or 10 gems.

Good point.

So you are saying that the Etheral bow is worthless? It's not a good giant killer? I have militia to hunt rats with.

Well, your stated problem was killing a stupid dragon pretender and all those bears he summons, not giants. Ethereal bows are incredibly useful on assassins - but much less useful, even when set to fire cavalry/fire large in larger battles since (assuming a standard mixed army on the opposing side) you'll quite often hit the wrong target and take out some cheap unit instead, even with high precision - less mistakes when the targets get close to your archer, of course, but cheap nature mages are not the sort of casters who should ever risk being close to an enemy as they die easily.

I have tons of archers. I have Flaming Arrows.

Which should do the trick without your sniper squad.

I want a Dragon killing assasin squad. I want those charging giants to fall like flies.

Ah, if that is your desire, then go ahead and build your sniper squads. It will be fun.

Lets see a $110 shaman for eagle eye, Ethreal crossbow 5 Pearls, Boots of quickness 10 water gems, Eye of aiming 5 Air. NOTICE no Fire or Death which are in high demand.

Heh - a significant change of mind (which I applaud) from the first post, where the question was what to do with the darned death gems.

So for 20 gems and $110 I get a ....18 percision archer that fires EVERY turn and that kills ANYTHING that fails it's MR roll. It looks cheap.

So long as it hits the right stuff and the right stuff doesn't have high MR, and so long as the enemy doesn't have archers hitting the general area your nature mage is in, it'll do the job. I'm not denying that it can do the job, but cheap?

You aren't talking about making one of these to be effective in an army but a group of these - say 5-10 for a 100-200 assorted gem cost. Add to that the forging time cost (3 items each), and that's 15-30 mage-turns additional cost to be factored in.

What could you (potentially) get for 100-200 assorted gems and 15-30 mage turns, that aren't fire or death? Disregarding your exact research levels now but looking at it in general, that's several elemental royalty (you can get two fully kitted out air queens at the high end of that range, each able to kill almost any army an AI can put together without help if most of the gems are air/earth), or it is a band or two of moonblade wielding ethereal giants and their even nastier leader (if lots of astral gems to burn), or it is two separate global enchants adding to your gem income each turn, or it is a dozen clams making astral gems, or it is an army of vine ogres, or... - any of which will likely contribute more over time to defeating a red dragon and his stupid bears and your next opponents than 10 archery mages will do.

...But it might not be as fun. Go build your sniper squads and regale us with tales of their usefulness. There are many things that aren't strictly speaking "best", but which are immensely fun to try out.