Two radical suggestions....

[Endoperez]

Gold=>Gems shouldn't be possible! Really, money is so much more common than gems... Besides, 25 gp would be too little and by a big amount! It would be more economical to change fire gems to gold and from gold to astral pearl than to change them straight to the pearls... Even without any alchemy bonus! And even with a bigger number, it would be possible to get infinite number of gems... Even with a 50 gp per pearl, Wish would only cost you 5 000!

[Endoperez]

Originally posted by Cohen:
What's the resource improving item?

It doesn't exist. Rabelais suggests that one could be made.

I don't know how Rabelais imagined it when he mentioned the idea, but I quess it could be some kind of a miscellanous item (pocket smith), or a magical hammer of some kind. I think it should be unique, and it would need high Earth magic.

[rabelais]

Originally posted by Endoperez:
Gold=>Gems shouldn't be possible! Really, money is so much more common than gems... Besides, 25 gp would be too little and by a big amount! It would be more economical to change fire gems to gold and from gold to astral pearl than to change them straight to the pearls... Even without any alchemy bonus! And even with a bigger number, it would be possible to get infinite number of gems... Even with a 50 gp per pearl, Wish would only cost you 5 000!

I *did* say these were aggressive proposals with obvious problems.

My initial thought was 50gp=one pearl, but it didn't seem like it would elicit as much horror/variability. I never get far enough in the tree to cast Wish and hadn't considered it.

Is 5000 gold really of less value than a wish?

That's a LOT of money.

Rabe the Intrigued.

[PvK]

I tend to dislike games where "you can buy anything with enough money", so I think I prefer not to be able to alchemize gems. However an international gem trade of some sort might be reasonable. Various ways that could work. You can currently do so in MP but the exchange is entirely on a trust basis. Which is limited but ok.

Items that increase resources... a magic forge or something? That could be ok if it was limited well enough. It might be best if the increase were percentage-wise rather than absolute, or were a very small number, and/or if only one were effective per province, and/or it were a unique item (or 2-3 unique items). Again, there are interesting limits and balances in the existing system, which this ability could bland-ify unless limited. One benchmark to playtest would be Ulm - who should not be able to become much more powerful by mass-producing these, I would think.

PvK

[rabelais]

Originally posted by PvK:
I tend to dislike games where "you can buy anything with enough money", so I think I prefer not to be able to alchemize gems. However an international gem trade of some sort might be reasonable. Various ways that could work. You can currently do so in MP but the exchange is entirely on a trust basis. Which is limited but ok.

I like that you can do better than alchemy with trading, I just think the convertability between gems/money should go both ways. At an appropriately draconian ratio, of course

Money is quite scarce in Dom2. Production is ultimately maintenance (gold) limited rather than resource limited.

If people wish to spend cash in juicing their magic resources I think that should be explored as a valuable new strategic dimension to the game.

I agree that there is potential for abuse, but they open up strategies that are not available currently, and it's not obvious that they would break the game anymore than it is already, from a munchkin PoV.

Items that increase resources... a magic forge or something? That could be ok if it was limited well enough. It might be best if the increase were percentage-wise rather than absolute, or were a very small number, and/or if only one were effective per province, and/or it were a unique item (or 2-3 unique items). Again, there are interesting limits and balances in the existing system, which this ability could bland-ify unless limited. One benchmark to playtest would be Ulm - who should not be able to become much more powerful by mass-producing these, I would think.

PvK

Again, I am attempting to maximize choices while making optimization difficult.

Ulm might benefit from having these for a early blitz, but my real purpose was to allow players to mass produce any unit they could recruit, subject to gold/dominion constraints if they choose to invest in the strategy. If ulm thinks investing its gems/mage time into increasing production capacity is worthwhile, (as well it might under IF) I'd like to have an opportunity to integrate that in a balanced way into the game.

How to turn cash---> gems in an interesting and balanced way is not a trivial discussion. But the best thing about dominions is you can try so many different approaches to victory and have an equally huge number of counters available.

This just opens up a few new creative paths.

Which is always good, in the long run.


Rabe the Non Commutative RPS Theorist

[PvK]

Sometimes though it's interesting that some things can't be done. Sometimes you get a province where it has a nice unit type, but the number you can build is limited by low resources. You can build a fort there, but it still may be fairly low. That's a limit to what you can do, but from another POV, it's also an interesting limit. If there is an item that can overcome this, it could remove that kind of situation from the game... unless it is itself limited in some way(s), such as I mentioned before.

One just needs to be careful when adding new abilities, to be aware of what situations one is removing from at the same time. Some inabilities can be interesting limits.

PvK

[tinkthank]

I'd personally prefer *not* to see the ability to purchase gems for money, but that's just me. It would make the late game very very different. Maybe that would be good, sure, but I'd sort of not like to see astral gems be purchasable unless some freaky incedent occured -- perhaps an occult traveling salesman comes to random towns?