Gem Producing Items

[Bummer_Duck]

Ok, another noob guestion. I'm dabbling in creating gem producing items in a game. While it is true that I didn't specifically set my nation up to farm these items, I don't feel that I could have *substantially* increased the current production rate of 3 a turn. So, when I come across a post referencing gem production in several hundred range, I have to wonder how this is possible. Are these posts referencing a game that is 100+ turns along? and massive buildups on either side? or a mod? Otherwise, I can't see how this is possible with a normal nation. Anyone care to explain?

Thanks!

[Scott Hebert]

Generally speaking, it's easiest with Clams. Clams generate Astral Pearls, which for a 2-1 correspondence can be more of the gems used to make it. Someone better than me showed the slippery slope of Clam production, but here's a small analysis.

Say you start the game as Atlantis.

Turn 1:
Production: +5W
Make a Deep Seer.
EOT Gems: 5W
Turn 2:
Production: +5W
Make another Deep Seer.
EOT Gems: 10W
Turn 3:
Production: +5W
Make a third Deep Seer.
EOT Gems: 15W
Turn 4:
Production: +5W
Assuming you've hit Construction 2 by now, have 2 of your Deep Seers make Clams.
EOT Gems: 0W
Turn 5:
Production: +5W
Assign the 2 Clams to someone.
EOT Gems: 5W
Turn 6:
Production: +5W, +2S
Have a Deep Seer Forge a Clam.
EOT Gems: 2S
Turn 7:
Production: +5W, +2S
Assign the Clam to someone.
EOT Gems: 5W, 4S
Turn 8:
Production: +5W, +3S
Forge a Clam.
EOT Gems: 7S
Turn 9:
Production: +5W, +3S
Transmute your 10 pearls into 5 water gems, Forge a Clam, and assign your Clam to someone.
EOT Gems: 0
Turn 10:
Production: +5W, +4S
Assign your clam to someone.
EOT Gems: 5W,4S
Turn 11:
Production: +5W, +5S
Make a Clam.
EOT Gems: 9S
Turn 12:
Production: +5W, +5S
Assign your clam to someone, transmute 10 pearls to water gems, and forge another one.
EOT Gems: 4S
Turn 13:
Production: +5W, +6S
Assign your clam to someone, transmute 10 pearls to water gems, and forge another one.
EOT Gems: 0
Turn 14:
Production: +5W, +7S
Assign your clam to someone.
EOT Gems: 5W, 7S
Turn 15:
Production: +5W, +8S
Assign, forge.
EOT Gems: 15S
Turn 16:
Production: +5W, +9S
Assign, transmute, forge.
EOT Gems: 14S
Turn 17:
Production: +5W, +10S

At this point, you can forge a clam a turn. Soon, you'll be able to forge 2 a turn, and it snowballs even faster.

Note this assumes you find no sites to increase your gem income. If you do, you can transmute them to more water gems, and ramp up faster.

The other gem producers aren't so easy to exploit. The Fever Fetish diseases its owner, so basically you have to give it Undead to 'feed on'. OTOH, it does produce fire gems, which are needed in its construction. Transmuting 4:1 to get to Nature, though, is a killer.

Finally, the Blood Stone is rather hard-set, because you can't 'transmute' blood slaves.

[Oversway]

So, when I come across a post referencing gem production in several hundred range, I have to wonder how this is possible. Are these posts referencing a game that is 100+ turns along?

Depends on the play style. Some hoard from the get go, others wait until mid game. As Scott described above, it can take a bit of time to really get rolling in gems. As he noted, if you have more gems coming in from other sources, you can get it going much faster.

[Bummer_Duck]

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.

I imagine that you'd be using fragile units to hold all these items. I think it might be fun to catch a player doing this, and use a few choice spells against those units...before they pay off. :-)

Thanks!

[Oversway]

Mostly you put them on stealthy troops (typically scouts or black servants). Some (all?) of the remote damage spells can kill them, if you can find where a bunch of them are.

[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.

[NTJedi]

Hopefully Dominions_3 will allow people hosting games to disable specific items and/or spells.
This way if some spell or item is unbalanced or bugged gamers will be able to disable it.

No more complaints about Ghost Riders being too powerful. No more complaints about hoarding clams... because gamers have the choice of only joining the games they feel are fair.

[Verjigorm]

I like clams set at 2W1S costing 10W + 5S It slows down hoarders, but kinda gives Atlantis the shaft. It's fine if no one wants to play Atlantis though.

[Endoperez]

NTJedi said:
Hopefully Dominions_3 will allow people hosting games to disable specific items and/or spells.
This way if some spell or item is unbalanced or bugged gamers will be able to disable it.

So you are asking that client checks what mods host has enabled, and downloads them if you don't have same version of that mod?

[tinkthank]

Endoperez said:

So you are asking that client checks what mods host has enabled, and downloads them if you don't have same version of that mod?

Not necessarily.
If you view my UI summary I posted on the Wishlist thread, you can see that under the "Advanced Parameters" section in Game Setup there could easily be a way to make certain pre-flagged items, much like has already been suggested and hence summed up there by me for certain spells, more expensive. It requires only that the developers pre-flag certain game information (I had summed up the suggestions: Summon, Summon SC, etc.) as such, much like "Event Frequency" is currently adjustable in the current Dom2 game; in Game Creation, whoever sets up the game can decide whether factor X, Y or Z (e.g.: Spells flagged as Ritual Summons, or Unrest caused by Bloodhunting, or Gem Producing Items...) will be increased or decreased.