Doom wrote:I'm guessing he's making anything that people like to build lots of into an artifact? That's goofy...next up, basic magic swords become artifacts.
To be contrary, some of the changes are extremely useful. A few examples from the more recent builds:
"LA ry'leh freespawn upkeep free"
"Niefel giants made magic leaders (for Illwinter spell)"
For my single-player games and any multi-player games that I host, I will go through and undo the changes to gem-generators, dwarven hammers, sanguine dowsing rods, and the like. I'd make and release a 'light' version, but given the unending changes, it would be obsolete within a week.
Honestly this reminds me of certain mods for other games: Whole World Mod for EU3, Stainless Steel for Medieval 2, Wildmana for Civ4/Fall From Heaven 2. Beware the balance mod that changes into a more comprehensive mod!
My suggestion is that these mod-makers release a finished version which only addresses bugs and balance issues. A second, ongoing total conversion mod could be spun off, but probably should not form the basis for online multiplayer.
The main attraction of clams seems to be the fact that there aren't a lot of outlets for water gems, but plenty for astrals. So you're in effect trading your water gems of the here and now (which aren't very useful except for Frost Brands and Living Water Bottles) for a huge pile of Astral gems for the day when Wish and stuff like it come online.
Similarly, Bloodstones get a lot of use because it's relatively easy to get blood slaves but Earth income can be scarce.
Fever fetishes see the least use as Fire gems don't have a lot of outlets either.
Last edited by Zinegata on Thu Mar 31, 2011 7:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
Water gems are pretty awesome. Some of the best mage summons use them. Clams are kinda hard to get, and require an annoying crosspath.
Bloodstones are awesome because they directly feed into more bloodstones, and in the mean time you get boosters. Bloodstones are annoying because non blood nations will never get the steady slave income you need for mass production.
Fever fetishes are too much hassle for me to use in a serious way.
Eh? There are good water gem summons that aren't stuck at sea aside from Sea Trolll King (who gives you even more gems)?
Oh, and one more thing about Bloodstones: They also boost Earth. So being able to boost someone to cast earthquake and not having to have someone walk back to resupply earth gems is pretty nice too.
Last edited by Zinegata on Thu Mar 31, 2011 7:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
All of the gem types has some uses, so the argument "but you convert one kind of income into another" is a bit weak.
I think people fixate on clams because of Wish. They seem to imagine armies of Seraphs and super-mages casting Master Enslave when the truth is that they send off their super-SC and it gets sent to hell with no MR check by a guy using 2 blood slaves and their super-mage dies without casting a single spell when someone drops some Earthquakes or something.
I mean, even an income of 30 gems a turn is not a big deal and to get it you blow a giant wad of gems that you need to get in the first place (and the game can be over well before you get the hundreds of gems you need to get a decent income). The exchange in turn advantage is not worth it unless you are basically turtling until turn 60 AND are a major Water power.
In conclusion, it's far more powerful in theory than in practice.
Last edited by K on Thu Mar 31, 2011 7:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
Zinegata wrote:Eh? There are good water gem summons that aren't stuck at sea aside from Sea Trolll King (who gives you even more gems)?
Naiads, Kokythiads, and Hidden in Snow are all good water summons. There are some nice troop summons too. Water is probably the best elemental school for summons.
Zinegata wrote:Eh? There are good water gem summons that aren't stuck at sea aside from Sea Trolll King (who gives you even more gems)?
Naiads, Kokythiads, and Hidden in Snow are all good water summons. There are some nice troop summons too. Water is probably the best elemental school for summons.
Naiads are limited to their home province otherwise they start dying. They're very good for at-home ritual casting or forging, but not much more beyond that.
Zinegata wrote:Eh? There are good water gem summons that aren't stuck at sea aside from Sea Trolll King (who gives you even more gems)?
Naiads, Kokythiads, and Hidden in Snow are all good water summons. There are some nice troop summons too. Water is probably the best elemental school for summons.
Naiads are limited to their home province otherwise they start dying. They're very good for at-home ritual casting or forging, but not much more beyond that.
They are nature mages, they can and do regenerate themselves if they get into battle. You have to send them into battle once every 8 turns or so to keep them from dying or leave them at home. It's not much of a disadvantage. They can to research, forge, ritual cast or fight. Oh noes.
But yeah: water mages are good battle casters with nice low-level army clearing spells like Falling Frost. Water also makes its own boosters at a competitive rate. And Water gems can make Water Casters. Seriously, I love water gems.
You know what gems are kind of hard to use? Fire gems. I like Flame Snakes as much as the next guy, but honestly if you don't make Fire Mages for money you aren't going to be able to break into Fire.
You can break into Fire with Hidden in Sand and Tartarians, but it's not an easy route.
As for uses, I'm a big fan of Phoenix Rods and basic Fire-based armor for things that need armor, but don't rate good armor. I also like to straight empower with Fire to open up Banefire for Death casters and Astral Fire for Astral casters and that sending to Hell spell for Blood casters. Slapping that 5 gem flame bolt item onto a Scout is also a decent use of gems.
Yeah, Water is an amazingly good forging suit. Quickness Boots are not only at the top of SC equipment for their slot (standing right next to winged sandals), but they are also a perfect combo with any casting item. They damn near double the effectiveness of a Flambeau or Rod of the Phoenix, and they cost less. For the weapon slot they provide the Sword of Quickness and the Frost Brand, both of which are top grade SC weapons. For armor they make the Rhyme Hauberk, which is very good SC armor, and the Blue Dragon Scale, which you'd seriously make for fatigue reasons except that your water gems are too valuable. For the misc slot we have Bottle of Living Water, which is one of the best pieces of assassin equipment on the market in addition to being a fairly decent chunk of army that you can shuttle from lab to lab to get it to any war front you want. Water has probably the best set of combat boosters. The Robe is expensive when compared with Boots of Earth, but it's cheap compared to everything else, and the Water Bracelet is obscene. And of course, if you do want to invade under water, you need a big pile of water for Tridents and Goblets, that's not even up for discussion.
And that's before we get to artifacts or cross/colored items. Jade Armor is fabulous for a Queen of Thunder or Tartarian Spirit who wants to murder things but lacks feet. Winter Bringer is one of the nastiest and cheapest item spellspam items, and the Ice/Fire sword is possibly the best weapon, and certainly the best sword for its price.
But bottom line: a big pile of water gems is incredibly versatile. It can get you an army, it can get you thugs, it can get you casters, it can get you you line holding monsters, it can help equip your thugs, it can help equip your casters, it can equip your assassins, and it can send armies under water. Also you can load it onto battlefield casters and throw some pretty impressive battle spells.
Now if you're playing for the long game, you are going to need a big pile of Astral Pearls, because sooner or later your late game plan is going to involve a Ring of Wizardry. So in the long run, you're probably going to want to have built some clams. But spending gems on clams is something with very fierce competition.
Nature is a weird suit because its most salient feature is the fact that it has incredibly shitty battle magic until quite late in the game. Vine Arrow isn't exactly bad, but it's bad for Evocation 2, and not much comes online for some time after that. Nature nuking really never gets that good, Evocation 7 is a long walk, and while Storm of Thorns is an awesome spell, if you got it in Water, Fire, or Death at level 6, you'd rarely even care. But the late game mass combat spells... those are amazing. Mass Protection gives barkskin to every one of your units, it's not not Fog Warriors, or Armor of Lead, but it's a lot cheaper. Mass Regeneration is basically insane, and I can't really say enough good things about it. But the core of Nature battle magic is the spell Relief. It throws a random Reinvig on all your troops every round for the rest of the battle, which means that whatever the rest of your battle mages are doing, they get to do more of it.
Nature is perhaps best known for The Gift of Health, which is a spell that gives all your troops a bonus to hit points while they are in your dominion. This makes your PD a lot harder to cut through and reduces defensive losses substantially. But beyond that, it also removes battle afflictions from your units in your dominion. And it does it pretty fast. And most importantly: it affects afflictions handed out by age and the ones that come with Tartarians and all that shit. Whoever has the Gift of Health not only has a much easier time using old troops and mages, but is basically guaranteed a spot making Tartarians later on. And Nature generates that Gift of Health pretty easily, since it can also make the Mother Oak. But while hop skotching from Mother Oak to Gift of Health is a nice dream, only one faction is going to do that, and it's probably not going to be you.
Nature is also known for Gift of Reason. Because most of the late game stupidity involves taking ridiculous high end stuff and turning them into commanders so that you can deck them out with equipment to make even more ridiculous high end stuff. But a lot of those things are actually over rated. You need some thugs and SCs, but often as not you could get that ball rolling cheaper and faster with like Bane Lords or something.
Nature has some great magic items. In the boot slot you have Birch Boots (50% cold and poison res and 2 points reinvig) and boots of the messenger (4 points reinvig). These are among the best boots in the game. They are both moderately helpful for a SC and probably the go-to if you can't get or can't use winged sandals or boots of quickness. But mostly they are absolutely the go-to boots for any combat caster. Next up we got the Armor slot, where you have Hydra Armor, which is light encumbrance, gives 100% poison res, and also makes you regenerate. The only thing it doesn't do particularly well is provide actual protection. Green Dragon Scale is light medium armor with good poison res. Either one could make an appearance on a thug. Shields are where Nature really shines in thug equipment. The Vine Shield and the Eye shield both really hose enemies who are mobbing you. For helmets you get the Horned Helmet, which gives a bonus attack and a lot of protection, and competes with Horror Helms for standard thug gear. The big deals for the Misc Slot are the Ring of Regeneration which is standard issue thug gear across the world, and the Amulet of Resilience which is 5 points of reinvig that is standard issue battle caster gear. But there's also the Cat Charm, which gives you a bonus to Seduction attempts, so if you're EA Arco or Lanka you'll end up making a bunch of those. Weapons is the only place where Nature kind of falls down - the only one of note is the Snake Bladder Stick, and that makes a giant poison cloud - which is great for grinding away armies of living troops but frighteningly worthless against undead or enemy thugs. And of course, there are the boosters (Thistle Mace or Treelord Staff). And the food items. And the whole Vine Ogre pyramid scheme.
Nature combo items are pretty strong. The Summer Sword (Nature/Earth) provides a hundred supplies and on top of that it lets you itemspam tangle vines (no big deal, but a lot better than the nothing your supply commanders are normally doing). It's also a decent magic sword in its own right, no matter what the description says. The Rainbow Armor (Nature/Air) is low encumbrance and provides more reinvig than it costs in casting fatigue, and also raises MR, making it some of the best caster armor on the market. The Totem Shield (Nature/Astral) is zero encumbrance and curses the enemy army with no actions on your part. Then there's the Thorn Armor (Nature/Blood) that boosts Nature and Blood from an armor slot. Bottom line: if you literally filled up every slot on a thug or battle caster with items made out of nature gems, I would understand.
Nature has a fuck tonne of summons. Most of these are crap. You only ever use Horned Serpents because you are desperate for bulk and you have a Nature 1 mage in a castle under siege. It's better than not having the option, but it's never going to be part of long term plans. The big ones to point to are Vine Ogres, Wooden Constructs, and Lamias. Lamias regenerate at "stupid fast" so if you boost them with stuff like Mass Protection or Cloud Warriors they become extremely hard to kill. And if you have a big nature mage, they come out extremely quickly. Vine Ogres and Wooden Constructs are just big piles of hit points that never run away. This makes them draw fire (because of their high hit points) but not really hurt your army if they get stabbed. True story: the AI targets Lumber Constructs in preference to Arch Devils. Very late in the game, you can seriously do worse than Tarrasques. They are nigh invulnerable and surrounded by a huge poison cloud. So unless your enemy is Ermor, they are good front line troops.
But Nature can also give you access to caster summons. The basic is the Ivy King, who is part of the Vine Ogre pyramid scheme, and is also just plain a Nature 3 caster with good stats. But you're also looking at Lamia Queens (a great way to expand into Death and Blood), and Faerie Queens (a great way to expand into Air).
But yes, there is no limit to how many Nature Gems you could spend. If nothing else, you'd crank out Treelord Staves and Ivy Kings and have them crank out huge piles of Vine Ogres and then back it all up with Mass Regeneration, Storm of Thorns, and Charm. Or outfit your battle casters or thugs in bling bling. Or have your Nature Cyclops make 11 Lamias a turn for a while.
Ivy Kings have enough nature so that they can summon Vine Ogres, and they can natively summon more Vine Ogres than other Nature casters due to an inherent ability.
So summon a couple of Ivy Kings, and you'll have an army of Vine Ogres at a discount in no time.
Sleepers also seem decent if you are lugging around big armies that could use a morale boost.
Sleepers also can lead magic and undead, making them pretty awesome commanders late in the game when your front lines are far from home, and you really need a new commander (or someone to run around picking up a myriad of stragglers).
Kaelik, to Tzor wrote:
And you aren't shot in the face?
Frank Trollman wrote:A government is also immortal ...On the plus side, once the United Kingdom is no longer united, the United States of America will be the oldest country in the world. USA!
Fire in particular I struggle with; I always end up summoning the Kings of Fire simply cause I don't know what to do with the gems; but I doubt I'd get to do that in multi-player all the time. Sometimes I use that 10 unit fire ranged attack, but that's sorta wasteful.
I'm pretty sure you should mostly use them for battlemagic. There's also some decent weapons and artifacts.
DSMatticus wrote:It's not just that everything you say is stupid, but that they are Gordian knots of stupid that leave me completely bewildered as to where to even begin. After hearing you speak Alexander the Great would stab you and triumphantly declare the puzzle solved.
OK first off: you basically cannot summon fire mages with fire gems. There are two fire kings to be had, but that's it. If you bootstrap a commander into fire, you have one commander who can use fire. There is no pyramid scheme on the table.
That having been said, it is also true that Fire is very poor at putting troops on the table. Fire Snakes are not a bad deal, but they are slow as fuck and come online at Conjuration 6. Summer Lions are very powerful, but over priced. Fire Drakes are also very powerful, but even more over priced. It's basically all for emergencies only except the Fire Snakes, and those things are heavy infantry that come four at a time, so if you need an army that is in any way fast, they won't do. Fire is so hard to get into and so bad at creating thugs, mages, or army mass that many factions just turn the gems into money - fire gems convert into gold at the best exchange rate. LA Ermor often notes that an Ermorian Castle costs "80 fire gems".
So let's talk about what fire does do: Fire Damage. If your enemies are not immune to fire, Fire does an admirable shit tonne of damage. I never stop singing the praises of Falling Frost, and Falling Fires hits even harder in almost all cases. You start with the best bullshit 0-level attack spell (Fire Flies), and there is a new exciting way to kill people with Fire damage in every level of Evocation (although from level 6 on, they are mostly weird and situational uses). Fire magic hits hard, and it does so at incredibly low level. Fire Bolt is 22 points of armor piercing damage, and you get it with Evocation one. And you rarely cast it because Fire Ball hits an entire square and has a fatigue inducing heat blast that extends beyond that.
Fire resistance of any kind is very rare. Hinnom has partial and Abyssia has full, and that's pretty much it. People can pull in some earth based constructs (clockwork horrors, mechanical men, and iron dragons are all fire immune), and a lot of thug gear provides fire resistance, but if your opponent has any kind of army, you can expect valid fire targets to be in there (unless you are fighting Abyssia or Gath of course). Which is good, because Fire's options for when the opponent doesn't take damage from fire are pretty slim. Here is the entire list of what your casters can do: Blindness, provide Fire Resistance to your other troops, Rage, enchant the arrows of your soldiers. I'm not even joking, that's the entire list of battlefield fire spells that are effective against fire immune targets. And even then, the arrow enchanting spell is called Flaming Arrows" and the accuracy boost is usually considered secondary to the pile of fire damage that the spell inflicts. Even the battlefield summons seriously create creatures made of living fire whose attacks are fire damage.
Flaming Arrows deserves its own paragraph, because it is crazy. The first thing it does is make all your arrows and javelins and stuff get a little icon where they are on fire. This is awesome. But the first important thing it does is to make all the arrows fired by your whole side count as magic. This gives them +2 on the roll to determine if they hit an actual enemy or lodge in a shield or the ground, which is huge. Also it bypasses etherealness and breaks mist form and all that. But the thing people really know it for is that every arrow does a pile of armor piercing fire damage. And that absolutely shreds things. Even short bows turn into death machines. And Flaming Arrows buffs your entire army. It's enchantment 4 and it will change your life. You can cast it as a Fire 2 if you buff up with Phoenix Power and spend an extra gem.
Fire also has not one but two whole battlefield destruction spells. Heat From Hell and Fire Storm. You can cast both and they stack.
Now let's talk about Forging. Pure Fire items rarely make it onto high grade thugs. The Burning Pearl is some fire resistance and a boost to Attack skill. That's a misc item you'd throw on a gargoyle or something if you didn't have anything good to use instead. The Dragon Helm is 15 points of protection with no downsides and a boost to morale of all things. Again, this is something you would use if you didn't have access to something good like a Horror Helm or didn't feel the need to shill out that many gems to protect the head of a character. Fire Plate lives in the same eco-niche. Red Dragon Scale is actually very nice low-fatigue armor, but it's the only thing that seriously tempts many SCs. What fire forging is for, is item spam. The Rod of Authority lets you spam Fire Bolt, the Wand of Wildfire lets you spam Fireball, the Rod of the Phoenix lets you spam Incinerate, and the Flambeau lets you spam Holy Pire. The Flambeau is also a 13 damage armor piercing sword that does triple damage against Undead, and is actually used as an actual Thug Weapon against certain kinds of Undead (notably Tartarians). It's also important to note that Holy Pyre does Holy damage, not Fire damage, and is otherwise only castable by Marignon.
All of those itemspam spells are very very good. Fire Bolt is bigger than a double strength crossbow bolt. Fireball is 16 damage AP to a whole square, has a very long range, and sets shit on fire. Incinerate ignores armor and magic resistance and always hits for 18 damage. Holy Pyre is three squares of modest AP damage but against Demons and Undead it is 3 squares of twenty one armor piercing damage, with again a very long range. There are a few fringe things you can do involving Medallions of Vengeance, but honestly if you just spent all your gems on battle magic and forging itemspam for even more battle magic, I would totally understand.
But Fire also plays very well with others. Water + Fire builds Rune Smashers, which are like double strength Spell Foci in a hand slot. Fire + Death gives you Banefire, which is the second most damaging spell in the game (after Gifts From Heaven) at 53 points, Armor Piercing; and unlocks Reanimate Archers. Fire + Astral unlocks Astral Fires, which is an Astral spell that is actually good at killing large numbers of chaff troops. Fire + Earth unlocks the entire run of Magma spells (that hit very hard and have good areas) and a quite substantial run of SC gear. The Fire Brand is pretty much the go-to Thug sword, since it hits an area with fire (that almost no one is immune to) and the base attack itself is armor piercing. The Charcoal Shield damages everyone who attacks you with fire, while the Gleaming shield gives you Awe. Both are incredibly competitive for the shield slot. Also it gives you Elemental Armor, which presents 50% resistance to Fire, Ice, and Shock (may be vital, depending on how your enemies are fighting your thugs). Fire + Blood gives you the coveted Arch Devils (one of the few ways to summon a fucking fire caster), as well as ushering in the Soul Contract Devil factories and the Hellsword (one of the better two handed weapons). And of course provides the best anti-SC spell ever: Banish to Inferno. Truly, whatever magic you do, it is extremely likely that Empowering a point in Fire is actually a reasonable use of your time.
Rituals are pretty simple. You're not going to put up the Second Sun because it is generally pointless even if you are Abyssia. The Eternal Pyre is pretty sweet but all it really does is give you more Fire Gems, so you're no closer to figuring out a long term plan with them than before. Fires From Afar is situationally quite nice. What it does is causes up to 10+ units in the target province to be hit with a 15 point armor piercing attack. It is randomly assigned between units in the province and has an equal chance of targeting a commander or a troop. That means that if you find a province with a research park, you can blow the fuck out of it and laugh. In that situation it's like 10 gems and one unit of commander time for 10 supercharged Seeking Arrows. If the enemy has hundreds of chaff troops, it's pretty much useless. But if you dump it on a castle full of Loremasters or something, you get an intense return. At Evocation 9 you unlock the stupidly titanic version of that spell: Flames From The Sky. It works pretty much oppositely, in that it is a 15 point armor piercing hit to half the units in the province, randomly selected. So if your opponent has a thousand undead in a pile, it'll hit five hundred units. Also note that since it's a 50/50 shot to nail any particular enemy, the troops don't protect leaders at all, and you'll hit fully half the enemy mages no matter how many soldiers are there or not there. It's huge.
So that's Fire. Used in a bunch of cross path high end gear and used to mass produce indie commanders who spam really fearsome evocations. And that's mostly what you do with Fire gems.
Fire is the gem type the game wants you to spend in battle. There are a lot of really great Fire battlefield spells that cost gems with Flaming Arrows being one of the best and easiest, but Heat from Hell and Fire Storm (not to be confused with Flame Storm, the ritual spell that attacks half the units for a pretty cheap cost of 35 gems).
That being said, Fire is a weird thing to break into. If you can ever get 50 Fire gems at a time, you can take one of the Shamans who appear in every era and Empower him. From there, you can make Fever Fetishes.
Fever Fetishes get their own paragraph. Now, they make the guy holding them diseased, and they make gems when he is below 70%ish HPs. The upshot is that if you can put some regen on him after he hits 50% HPs, he'll stop losing HPs and you now have a gem gen. (The cheapest regen is a N4+ Bless and a Shroud). This all makes them the easiest gem gens to make, and you can just toss them onto Scouts if you don't want to slap regen on them and live with scouts dying all the time.
As for getting Fire mages, you aren't going to do Tartarians. The chances of getting a non-Feebleminded one are just really bad, and even with Tar factory you aren't getting many.
That leaves Hidden in Sand (E3/D). This spell costs Earth gems... you know, the completely awesome gem type that makes the best items and has the best summons and some of the best battlefield spells? The upshot is that when you cast it it also gives you around 30-50 wights (and some leaders are Holy, which can be a big deal) and 0-2 mages (F/E/D2/H2 with two F/E/D randoms and a rare S2 random). The downside is that the chance for a mages is random (0-2), the spell can only be cast in a Wasteland, it's Enchantment 7 (but near Fire and Erath gem gen Globals), and it gets more mages in Fortune and Magic and more units in Order. Other than that, they are great little units with high HPs, good att and Def with Fire Power, Heat Auras, and Fire resistance.
Being Fire and Death casters, they let you make Flaming Skulls(F/D). With a little luck, you can grab an F3, Skull him for F4 to make a Flaming Helmet for a grand total of F5... more than enough to do big Fire action.
Fire gems often get places in the "well, we can't do much them so I'll make this instead" category. For example, drakes are generally an awful use of gems, but Fire drakes are pretty neat because you aren't going to use the gems for other things. They spit low range Fireballs (only 5) and are a decent 96 HP unit to boot if you don't mind blowing the mage time and with a little regen and protection magic they are nice little meatshields. Scorpion Beasts are really quit nice and also cost Fire gems, and have 56 HPs and Death Poison. Both have terrible Att and Def.
From there, we have the items. The Rod of the Phoenix is just awesome, and at 25 gems it seems really expensive, but you are using Fire gems that you don't care about. Put 4-5 on guys with Boots of Quickness and you can destroy armies that most people think are impossible.
Basically, all the item spams are winners.
I've talked about the BS cheap armors, but there are also the great armors that come if you mix with other things. For example, a Gleaming Shield gives Awe and is one of the best SC shields out there, but the Charcoal Shield gives Fire Shield and is equally neat for an SC. Both need Earth, as does a Flaming Sword.
Fire also gets converted into gold at 1 gem to 15 gold. There are worse things than making gold gens, especially in long games.
If I was forced to chose one master plan with Fire and I wasn't a Fire nation and my Earth income was commited to something else, I'd probably Empower casters. I'd either choose Blood or Astral casters for Communion goodness and the big battlefield-smashing Fire magic, or Blood casters for Infernal Prison, or just get some random dudes and Empower to 1, Flaming Skull for 2, Phoenix Power for 3, and cast with an extra gem for Flaming Arrows (with Fever Fetished Scouts tagging along to fuel it).
Last edited by K on Fri Apr 01, 2011 11:34 pm, edited 4 times in total.
