How do you spend your Gems in the early-mid game?

[Ironhawk]

What about gem generator spells? Mother Oak at the very least. I suppose the others could be considered late-game only.

[Meglobob]

I agree with the gem spending choices so far, some additional ones:-

Air: Cloud Trapze, Fog Warriors, Phantasmal Army, Air Elementals (usually via Living Clouds), the fantastic air magic air bows, eye of aiming, call of winds(sieging, fast gem/magic item carriers), great eagles, watchers, hurricane, shimmering fields.

Astral: Ring of sorcery, wizardary.

Nature: Gift of reason.

Earth: Gargoyle.

[Baalz]

Blood: Hoard from Hell, Rain of Toads - honestly I think these are my two favorite blood spells. Of course there are lots of uses for blood slaves...

Earth: Weapons of Sharpness - can be cast by an e2 guy, summon earth power plus a few gems (bonus - he can follow that up with strength of giants and legion of steel)

Astral: Power of the spheres (*great* with communion + light of the northern star). Nobody mentioned Mind Hunts?

Death: Another one nobody mentioned that I spend a lot of gems on - skull mentors! Shadow blast is great mid game.

Nature: amulet of barkskin - surprisingly effective for thugs in combination with decent armor given the price and research level.

[Edratman]

This one is a big one for me: Air- bows for commanders, scripted to fire rear.

[Xietor]

In the 3 mp games I am playing:

Alpaca-Pangaea-1st spell i put up-mother oak

Epic Heroes-Shinuyama-1st spell i put up-Well of Misery

Big Game-MA Ctis-ruthlessly attacked the whole game so

Death-bane lords, gems for shadow blast

Water-boots quickness, frost brand, bottles of water, rime hauberk

Nature-boots, ring regen, amulets

Astral-spell focus, luck pendants, s1 boosters,

fire n/a

Earth n/a

air n/a

The spell I would most like to get up-haunted forest

[sum1lost]

I recently started spamming spells like blight, hurricane, and the locust thing, and I love it. love love love it. Hit somebodies capital with all three and you can cost them something like 500-1000 gold in a turn.

So, earth, air, and nature.

[Endoperez]

Spamming even one of them at the enemy's capital works. They rise unrest, and once unrest is over 100 (10 castings of any one of them will raise it way above 100) they can't recruit from their capital. It's a nasty tactic.