Suggestion: Keep (Make) Wish Farming Viable

[BNRON]

Wish Farming:

Wish farming is the idea of using the wish spell to wish for gems to fuel further wishes at a profit. While it sounds cool and thematic, and like it might be too strong, the strategy is actually rarely used in dom5, due to a low yield, high research requirement, and the massive upfront cost of creating an astral 9 caster (and casting the wishes).

With the teased changes to dom6 (the nexus and the new gem type), I got hyped that wish farming might become a viable end game strategy! This possibility seemed awesome, as I think having wish-farming as viable strategy would be great. It is thematic, and it is unique from other end game strategies (like controlling global spells, immortal plays, or blood) and so adds diversity and style to the end game.

However, according to discord chatter, it seems that wish farming is actually being nerfed further into un-viability. Apparently, the wish spells will no longer give astral gems, and the way the numbers work out this means that it is very hard for wishing for gems to make a profit. This (potentially inadvertent) nerf seems a shame :( and I am hoping it can be reconsidered.

The New Nexus spell:

I think the teased nexus spell adds a great potential for wish farming to be viable and fun. To elaborate, apparently in dom6 there is a spell that creates a connection to a unique province (the nexus) with a guaranteed alteration discount site. This new spell seemed a perfect way of enabling wish farming to be both a) viable and b) able to be countered and fun to play against.

1. the nexus would make wish farming reliable as every game there would be a guaranteed alteration discount site (this lowers the cost of wish ensuring wishes bring in more gems than they cost).
2. wanting/needing to cast wish from the nexus would expose the wish farmer to risk, both from potential horror attacks, and other players contesting the nexus or casting remote attack spells.

Even Buffed Wish Farming won't Dominate

Even buffed, it seems Wish Farming would still be a rare strategy because the size of investment it requires creates a huge risk. The investment takes a long time to pay-off, meanwhile enemies can be building armies and attacking and pulling off their own end-game plays. Further, because the investment requires spending huge amounts of gems empowering and equipping mages all in one location (the nexus with the discount site), the farmer is super vulnerable to their investment being destroyed (e.g., to being attacked by a super combatant, army attacks, or a remote attack spell).

[Sombre]

Is it thematic?

[Zonk]

Indeed. What's so thematic about it?
I actually would like to see Wish being boosted in some ways, perhaps allowing to summon units directly as commanders and gaining some new option.

Allowing wish farming again MIGHT even be good for late-game balance, but I don't see what's thematic about being able to (albeit indirectly) wish for more wishes.

It's an idea that comes up in fiction, but that doesn't mean it's portrayed as working, and sometimes characters are explictly told they can't wish for more wishes.
Or their wishes end up being twisted against them.

[Ibis]

I'm not sure I wanna see wish buffed gameplaywise. It's already used plenty in lategame so it's probably not underpowered in dom5.
Also buffing it will incentivize some non-interactive gameplay like Pelagia turtling for 100turns. The Nexus plane use of wish is more interesting but doesn't warrant any additional change.

[Demonsthenes]

I think the dom5 Pelagia line with built in profitable wish farming is pretty cancerous; being able to profit tons of gems without having the contest territory or global slots breaks the core game design, since it's a huge source of income leading to victory without having to contest territory with other players.

My hope is that the teased Nexus plane will address that by making profitable wish farming possible, but only through control of the Nexus, which can be contested militarily, and thus be an interesting source of conflict in the game.

With a 20% discount, one will be able to turn 80 pearls into 175 gems; you can turn that into 7.5 pearls worth of profit, in addition to being able to convert any gem type into another, which is the big benefit to wishes.

[raffelon]

stumbeled across this on the search of a list of wish commands specifically for dom 6 in case that the one for dom 5 was outdated, also noticed that this is a old thread but:
I once tried wishing for gems long ago to find out how the new gem type affected balance and I think that while it no longer has astral pearls, it increased the ammount of gems to 30 per, so now it's actually a slight net positive on default, sure, it's questionable wether using the turn of a astral 9 mage is worth getting a handful of pearls (exactly 5 = one hand), but wish farming works, I'm actively using it in my single player games, but the insane investment means that by the time you made enough profit, you could also have just won using globals... well, that's just one more reason why I play single player

[Selgeron]

I wish Nexus Gate spell was a level 7 or 8 instead of being a level 9...

...and I also wish that Arcane Nexus could only be cast there