Tartarian factory

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by ywl:
I think it is.

You may be right. The only other gem type I found in abundance was astral.

Assuming the chance for site is 50% and the number of nature or death gems for each site is 2. For a rough estimation:
30 * 0.5 * 1/8 * 2 ~= 4
1/8 because I assume that there are equal chance for each type of site (not true) and I haven't counted holy or unholy sites.

There are also non-death non-nature sites which give out death and nature gems - I think I found a death-producing holy site in that game (don't remember the name), as well as an unusual number of Lifeless Lakes, maybe 3, which also provide death gems.

I used 40% sites BTW, and if I understand the mechanics well it should give a 41.92% chance to get 1 site average /province, although in practice it seems I get more than that.

But even if we increase the number to 1/4, it'd still only about 8. And you're talking Arco, who has no native access to nature or death. Search by spell will be slow.

Arco has limited access to nature, and I had Priestesses search every province before I could use Haruspex. The PoD was mainly used to locate death sites before I had another death mage for Dark Knowledge, so that wasn't a problem either.

And it's Conjuration 9, Construction 6 and Thaumaturgy 4 (low). This is a lot of research. As I said, with such research and gem, you could probably do equally well with Juggernaut, Tarrasque or even 9+ ghosts per turn.

I used Ghosts (although I summoned only 7/turn), my PoD did only that until I reached Conjuration 9. Juggernauts was a completely research area and not in the scope of this test, which was to demonstrate how Arco could abuse Tartarian Gate. And IMO neither Tarrasques nor Juggernauts come close to the strategic impact of a 2 air/3 earth Cyclops (my prime candidates for GoR) who can strike anywhere on the map with Cloud Trapeze.

Also, since Tartarian summons are undeads, you could in theory counter them with "Holy Pyre" or "Control the Dead".

I don't say they're invulnerable, yet they're incredibly powerful when equipped by Mystics. And very versatile too, if you look at the male Titans. Their high MR can reach impressive levels, eg one of the aforementioned Cyclops with just an AM amulet and Iron Will gets 26, and you can still add to this total.

But still, all these cann't disprove the fact that 10 gems (or 30 with GoR) for 100+ hp, undead mage is too much of a good deal; the funny, if not ridiculous, sight of tens of dead gods in an army.

I have the suspicion that the same trick is equally abusable for C'tis, Man or Pan. These nations have the advantage of a high nature gem income, the major bottleneck of the production line. Faery Queen is expensive but it's just 40 gems, merely the price of two GoR. They're also powerful air mage and generate free sprites. I won't mind having one or two of them just lying around.

I've tried with standard C'tis but the lack of effective and reliable healing made it much harder.