Random New Questions

[Arcturas]

Hey folks; a few quick questions about things I've run across in my recent EA Sauro game.

Arcane Nexus: it says half of the gems spent (rituals + forging) are converted into astral pearls. How exactly does that work? I forge a Horror Helm (10D). Is that 5 astral pearls, or 2.5 (half = 5, halved again for alchemizing in the nexus). How does it interact with hammers/forge of the ancients? Is it specifically spent gems, or the base cost of the item? If I were forging The Summit with a hammer, that's 40E * 3/4 = 30E. Would I get 15 or 20 pearls via the nexus? (I assume the nexus captures pearls for gems I spend, too)

Forge of the Ancients: that's a 25% forging bonus? (not sure if it's 25% or 50%). If it's 25%, can a CBM Forge Lord make items for free? Hammer (25%) + built-in bonus (50%) +FotA (25%) = 100% cost reduction? Or am I screwing up the order of forge bonuses. Similarly, would a forge lord with the hammer of the forge lord get free items (50% + 50%), or 1/4 (50%*50%)?

Water entry: I'm finding EA Oceania a huge pain the rear. I'm playing the Uropia map, and started over in what I think is Persia-ish, and Oceania has just about the whole mediterranean (we've been at war the whole game, but I've held onto all my land provs.). I reached conj 8 before EA Oceania, and would like to get the queens of elemental water before they can, as some SCs like that would make dealing with their 200+ unit armies much easier. Is wraith lord -> build laboratory -> Naiad/Sea King summoning really how I have to do it? I suppose it would be a little overpowered to be able to summon them above-ground.

Blood Hunting: I've read Baalz' guide to EA Mictlan and blood hunting, but I'm not 100% clear on everything. When I hunt, I need a total of 5 levels in blood to have a 100% chance of capturing slaves? I've been using 2 blood random warrior sorceresses with SDRs per province with a high success rate, but am finding the unrest is climbing awfully high. Giving provinces a few turn rest is a little annoying, as is ferrying around armies to patrol. Should I just ignore the unrest?

Blood Magic: Seems like it should be powerful, but I'm not sure the best way to leverage it. At the moment I've mostly been forging blood boosters for my witch kings, which is getting me more blood boosters - seems a bit of a cycle of boosters isn't going anywhere in the long run. I've got my eye on the blood royalty in the long run (though lacking B/F the arch devils are out of reach), but how do you effectively use it earlier? Spine devils seem costly at 7 slaves/3, though I've had good use of bone fiends as chaff blocking for androphag archers (3 slaves/9 is awesome). All the other blood summons seem really expensive in mage-time. Are they good enough to justify it? Do I just need to do it on a large scale? (e.g. 4 witch kings x 5 turns = 20 devils as a small, elite army?) Perhaps my problem is that I'm playing against the AI, which plays conservatively with huge horde-based armies.

Death Magic: What's the best use of my death gems? I hear that they're really effective. I tried a few Enaries casting shadow blast in combat and that was super-powerful (got to pick up some eyes of aiming though; low precision was rough even with a big blast radius), but I think I need to work on my gem-ferrying supply lines. Ritual casting, though, seems harder to get my hands on. Mostly the only obvious path is summoning/boosters for Tartarians, and Bane/Wraith Lords. Earlier on, should I be summoning chaff via Reanimation? I feel like I ought to go for a few Ermor games to really try an undead chaff based army. Still, Raise Skeletonx5 from 2-5 mages in front of 40 Androphags has done a number on most AI armies. That doesn't take death gems, either, which is cool for learning death magic but doesn't help me with the death gems use.

Souless vs. Skeletons: Just a quick check, as I am still learning here. Raise Dead gets me souless/longdead, while Raise Skeletons gets me skeletons? Soulless seem really crappy. I used Carrion Reanimation, and got a province but they were slaughtered by ~ 5 hirdmen who attacked the following turn. Sure, hirdmen are great, but 70 soulless v. 5 hirdmen seemed sad. Skeletons seem to have better staying power. Is it that soulless-generating spells tend to give more soulless/provide soulless as a benefit in battle-torn provinces more than being dedicated to them?

Golem Thugs & Trampling: I summoned my first golem a little while ago, and now need to figure out how to use him. Obvious basics: starshine skullcap/teleport. Now I have a thug who can go anywhere in the world! Woo! Except his def is crappy, protection decent but not stellar. Right now he has fenris' pelt and a shield of gleaming gold. Prot 18/def 16 seem low for a good thug. I could give him black plate instead of fenris' pelt next time, but...*shrug* Bane lords seem more effective, and close to as mobile with boots of flight. The golem has 7 precision, so the astral damage spells (Astral Geyser) don't seem that useful. Is Stellar Cascades better? (Cascades x4, wait, attack seems like it could be reasonable if I threw on some reinvig, as the golem only has 4 spellcasting encumbrance.)

How does trampling work, again? Is it in the manual? I assume I get to make free 0/0/0/0 attacks until I run out of move. It also seems to cause fatigue - the Golem is 0 enc, but with trample was generating 2-ish fatigue a turn. Not bad, but vs. glamour (Vanheim...) I need lots of attacks with his 9 attack skill to hit anything.

Thanks everyone! I really appreciated the answers from my last few threads.