What generates gems?

[Endoperez]

Dominion spread affects the early game. All test nations should have equal dominion, and preferably not too high. Dominion 9 will take a long time spreading everywhere, because the provinces have to max out before the extra faith "spills over". I suggest using dom 6.

Luck nations will be vulnerable to bad events early on, and Misfortune nations may get good good events, before the dominion has spread and scales have set. Running the games for longer will descrease the dominion factor, but there's bigger chance of province rebellion etc.


EDIT: I've been testing MA Ulm, Luck 3 Drain 3. You still get gem events, but magic items and mages are rare, and I think you get fewer gems but that could be just a feeling. Luck 3 was about equal to Order 3 as far as generating income over time goes, when you've only got few provinces, in addition to the other events. And Production happens to work well with Luck, because the mine events and traders' guilds give you permanent boosts to income and/or resources.

[JimMorrison]

But with Dom 9 and an awake pretender, your temple checks, of which you will get quite a few, will nearly always succeed.

I should go through and give them each a prophet in the first turn.

Also, there was a recent thread where IIRC KO states that Luck scale only matters in your home province, and once it has determined what kind of events you will have for the turn, it selects what province they happen in, and determines which exact event happens.

(Edit: Here it is, it was JO - [url=http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=dom3&Number=612131&Forum=)

It's a few posts down, I have no idea how to get a link to a specific post on the page.

[Endoperez]

JimMorrison said:
Luck scale only matters in your home province, and once it has determined what kind of events you will have for the turn, it selects what province they happen in, and determines which exact event happens.

I see. Luck still affects what exact event you get. I'm not sure if the gem events are luck-neutral or if they require luck, because I don't play with Misfortune. Gem LOSS events definitely won't happen in provinces with Luck, and I don't think I've seen blood slave rebellions either.

[MaxWilson]

Gem events must be luck-neutral (in terms of scales required). I habitually play with Misfortune-3 and get lots of them even in Misfortune-3 provinces. Note that there is also a "witch cursed your troops" event that gives you gems which counts as neither a good nor a bad event.

-Max

[Endoperez]

Attached is a map for testing scales. Up to 8 MA human nations start with ten provinces, one of which is cave and one of which is sea. They are temperature-independent and there's a temple in each non-underwater province. Capitals are cleared, so that there're no starting troops, no upkeep differences, no initial gem income etc etc.

It seems I also covered a bug. Your capital is in one of the 8 middle provinces, but not necessarily in the one #specstart gives you. The castle you should start with is in there. This may cause e.g. Arcoscephale to start where Agarthan Cave castle has been put, and with 1 candle of Agarthan dominion. It doesn't affect actual scale/event testing, but does slow initial dominion.

[Endoperez]

On the above test map, I did a test of 4 Order 3/Misfortune 1 nations against 4 Luck 3/Turmoil 1 nations. Every pretender was a Dom10 Oracle, all other scales were neutral.

Unfortunately all Order nations lost at least 2 provinces (from 10), so the results aren't easily comparable. Luck nations got so many more gems than the Order nations that I feel pretty confident with my earlier claim that Luck does, indeed, generate gems.

The four Order nations got 59, 23, 10 and 2 gems, while the four Luck nations got 135, 121, 112 and 25 gems during the 40 turns.

Turn 10: Order nations 4 gems total, Luck nations 51
Turn 20: Order 38 gems, Luck 186 gems
Turn 30: Order 76 gems, Luck 290 gems
Turn 40: Order 94 gems, Luck 393 gems

No one got Astral pearls or blood slaves. Death gems were a little less numerous than other gem types. Water and Earth were the most numerous, but not by much.

[JimMorrison]

Nice.

I'm still looking for a proper afternoon to run a thorough test. With the smaller map (nice setup for testing this btw, thank you!), I'll have to run 21 games to get the body of data that I want. So, obviously it'll take a few hours.