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

[Huzurdaddi]

Here is the list of things that I commonly use my gems for. I think ( and I could be wrong ) that most of these are cost effective.

Fire: Lightless Lanters, fire brands, charcoal shields, shields of gleaming gold, shadow brand, gems for flaming arrows

Air: Not much, maybe staff of storms. I usually just wait until conj-8 for the queens, which is a long time to wait.

Water: Frost Brands, Boots of quickness, Swords of quickness, Jade armor, Clams ( maybe )

Earth: Earth boots, Troll courts, fire brands, shadow brands, hammers

Astral: Luck pendants, AMA, starshine skull caps, maybe angels

Nature: Vine Ogres, Rings of regen, reinvig items, Eye shields, globals like GoH.

Death: Banelords, Wrath Swords, shadow brand, maybe wrathlords, maybe a lich or two, banefire archers can be very deadly.

Blood: lots-o-summons. Devils, Death Knights, Ice Devils, Storm Demons, Archies, Hell swords, blood stones, just great stuff.

What I notice is that, with the exception of blood and to a lesser extent death, there are not a lot of summons on the list. It seems that items dominate the list.

So what do you guys spend gems on?

[Valandil]

Aren't shadow brands death/earth?
Pretty similar, but of course some nationals make a pretty huger difference.

[Sir_Dr_D]

In addition to the ones that you put down

Air: mist, storm, wind guide, arrow fend. (i feel very defensless without air.)

Astral: eye of the void

fire/water: rune smashers

earth: the greatest anti super combatant weapon - Gate Cleaver

nature: swarm can come in handy at times.

[Valandil]

Well, I just found a few more:
All paths: Site Searches
Seeking Arrows, Teleports, Black Servants, mid game sevral mass-type nature spells.

[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.