How difficult is this game?

[Nikolai]

> How do I get gems?

Your capital generates some.

Magic sites are assigned randomly to provinces at start, or even appear sometimes out of their own. Some are hidden, so you have to search for them with mages.

Some items generate gems every month.

Some lucky events give you gems.

And there is trade in MP.

And there are spells that give you gems periodically or in one go. And if you are total bastard, you can hunt your population down to sacrifice them as slaves, or you can kill them to send crows to collect death gems (not recommeded)

There are no simple answers in Dominions III. :-)