Re: Baalz' guides
One thing I've always wondered about the guides:
What are the game settings they supposedly work on? Because they seem to assume independent strength 5, normal or easy research and a LOT of available gems. Having a standardized base setting defined for Baalz guides would be very useful for comparisons.
I've run the numbers on a few games I've played and in most of them, getting things done per these guides would not have been an option. Indies at 7, magic sites at 25-30 percent and hard research throws many, many things out the window or reorders probabilities and priorities to such a degree that only parts of the suggested strategies would work. Note that I mostly play SP or cooperative hotseat games, not standard MP.
For example, in a current game, my friend controls an entire corner of the map and soon around one quarter of the whole map. He has done all searches save fire and blood and he has a whopping 2 nature sites, one of which is Gateward Valley (no gems). He has had similar luck with death sites. No more than two or three and total income of both gem types is around 2-3 per turn.
Granted that that's unusual, but there you go. Makes for a whole different game and you need to throw a lot of things out the window and be really miserly with what you do.
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