Gem Producing Items

[Tuna]

Bummer_Duck said:
Ok, I was wondering if it had to involve cyclical transmutes. Seems wasteful to me, at least in the short term. Doubtful I'd ever do the transmute part. Good use for excess water gems, though.

Roi as astral from water gems is 10 turns, from transmuted astral 20 turns. There are very few things you can put those astral gems to get better returns, and very few other uses to use them for combat. While eary-game you might be weaker, enough people do hoarding that almost any game ends up with a hoarder winning. As the whole thing is one damned huge positive feedback loop, the earlier you start the better.

The most hardcore hoarders use pretty much all their gems until midgame for accelerating the hoarding machine, and do the fighting with just units bought with gold. Once the machine starts rolling, you get some dwarven hammers, etc, the returns are just huge.