Tip: Template for reducing late game MM hell

[Sombre]

Random events can't be modded or added.

Seriously, how can spells to create sites certainly be done?

[Micah]

Why are people so keen on preserving the gem generation mechanic?

From my experience playing without them it makes for a much better game, IMO. I'd like to hear why people are so reluctant to get rid of them.

[OmikronWarrior]

As an alternative to removing hammers, increasing the requirement to Earth-5, and thus the cost to 40 Earth gems, would have a similar effect. Only a handful of nations would be able to forge them, and those that do would have other objects competing for Earth gems. Forging a few to get a discount on really expensive items, such as Rings of Wizardry, would make them worth it, but not for mass producing the little stuff.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by OmikronWarrior

As an alternative to removing hammers, increasing the requirement to Earth-5, and thus the cost to 40 Earth gems, would have a similar effect. Only a handful of nations would be able to forge them, and those that do would have other objects competing for Earth gems. Forging a few to get a discount on really expensive items, such as Rings of Wizardry, would make them worth it, but not for mass producing the little stuff.

You sure about that? Saving 2 gems/forging, it takes a mere 20 turns to pay off one of those, and that's assuming you never forge anything better than a 5 gem item with it. And you pay it off in 4 turns forging more hammers, who then pay themselves off in no more than 15 turns. (And did I mention the gems they're paying themselves off with don't have to be earth? You might have earth to burn, and those earth are otherwise worth at best half a gem to you - like me right now in Water Total War.)

Doing this is just going to make the disparity between the haves and have-nots even bigger. As it is now, virtually everyone has access to hammers, so everyone benefits from the ability to rapidly diversify on limited gem totals. At 40e hammers become much more limited to those nations who can amass a lot of earth, and thus other nations get correspondingly straightjacketed into national path forgings.

The only way changing hammers is at all realistic is if you make all the magic paths equally good. As I highly doubt that's going to happen...

[Sombre]

People also get very, very tetchy about the changing of forge requirements for oft forged items. I think they get less tetchy about them being removed entirely tbh.

[Illuminated One]

Originally Posted by Sombre

Really? How can you do it? Enlighten me please.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=43892

Look at the example mod in there.
It doesn't create sites, but I does change the gem income of one of sauromatia's home sites.
Remove some "super sites" (discount sites and special indies) and replace them by sites where the player can increase the gem income through his actions (or maybe pay for a discount).
(You can also create sites, not by changing the mod, but by changing the savegame files)

Originally Posted by Micah

Why are people so keen on preserving the gem generation mechanic?

From my experience playing without them it makes for a much better game, IMO. I'd like to hear why people are so reluctant to get rid of them.

Well, I think you are right that they do not enhance the game as they are now. But it's the only mechanic that allows to affect your nation's economy besides the scales that you set on the very beginning.
Sure you can say that you want only battles but imo there is a much greater sense of archievement in creating and maintaining the economy that fuels your war than without it.
And then if you went down that direction (i.e. all that should be of strategic importance are battles) then I don't really see for what reason you'd want to keep the strategic map at all, since it only waters it down with luck (Ha! You underestimated me. Didn't quite expect that wrath of the sky from the air mages I found somewhere, huh?) or silly metagame stuff (Player X is known to go AI after some light raiding but Player Y makes sure whoever attacks him doesn't win the game, now, who should I attack). I guess in that case you could just give every player x rp and y gold and z gems to assign as they like before the game and then let them duke it out on some (completely) barren wastelands. That would even make for a fun game, I'm sure, but that's not for the long haul that dom3 games normally are.
So to come to a point, gem gens are broken, but I'd rather change them and see what happens instead of removing them.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Illuminated One

Well, I think you are right that they do not enhance the game as they are now. But it's the only mechanic that allows to affect your nation's economy besides the scales that you set on the very beginning.

Let me see if I'm understanding your point correctly: 4X games typically have Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate phases. Dominions has a more limited set of options for Exploit than MOM or MOO/MOO2.

1.) Site-search (costs mage time and/or gems, may permanently increase the gem-production of that province)
2.) Build forts (increases resource and gold output of that province, allows recruitment of national units)
2b.) Build labs/temples (may be necessary to allow you to exploit certain indy pop types and/or sites)
3.) Forge gem-generators

I think you're arguing that the options available to Exploit are so limited that eliminating #3 cripples the Exploit phase to the point where it's not really worth playing as a 4X game. Is that right?

-Max

[Zeldor]

Gem gens must go. They made late-game rot. I really prefer to just use higher magic site settings.

There won't be any other acceptable way to replace gem gens. They simply must go. There won't be anything done with forging either, unless someone wants to adjust prices for ALL rituals to match new situation. And I doubt people would like to play that.

New CBM is coming. CBM with nation balance fixes. It will be whole new world, new game then. So revolution is coming.

[Trumanator]

And Zeldor, His prophet, hath spoken the gospel, and the people found it good, and it was good.

[Psycho]

I know I won't be playing in another game with gem gens.