Where's temporary air gems or why discriminate air magic?

[corisai]

Greetings.

As I see - we don't have any craftable item that create temporary air gems, while all other elements have them.

In same turn air boosters are very gems-expensive.

And if we beleive old Dom4 research how magic sites distributed by mage level - we don't have notable more air magic sites then other elements.

So - why it's so unfair?

I can understand that it's some kind of "design solution" or "hard to master element" in Dom4, while both earth and air magic don't have own temporary gems - but now it's seem to be pure discrimination.

P.S. Also I will ask a side question to do not create another topic. When assault forts with TNN I had noticed that sorceress unable to cast air shield before walls defenders will hit them. Is it only tuatha problem (spell singing trait increasing cast time) or it's any spellcaster problem and soft mages mandatory should have air shield items / crafted armor for forts assaults?

P.P.S. As always - sorry for crude english and being non-native speaker :)

[ÆtherNomad]

Note that earth does have temporary gems. You also need blood to access them though. But it's still easier to get than astral temporary gems, that require both water and nature.

Also, you're forgetting to mention that air is one of the magic types with the less spells in the game. That part, as well as that of air sites, may be due to a relative lack of inspiration from Illwinter, maybe?

As for the fact that air boosters are hard to get and temporary air gems inexistant, it MAY be due to the fact that high air magic is sometimes considered as one of the most powerful battle magics.

Still, there exists some mods that try to solve this problem for people like you that want more temporary gems generators :p I don't know if they have been ported to dom 5 yet though.

As for your other question, it probably is a spell singing problem, yea.

[terve886]

Air is indeed one of the most powerful battle magic. While a fire resistance of 5 + heavy armor can block fire spell damage really effectively, 5 air resistance + heavy armor gives only slight reduction in the damage as the heavy armor protection is competely ignored.

[corisai]

Originally posted by ÆtherNomad:

Note that earth does have temporary gems.

That exactly why I wrote this.

Now all elements (not all magic schools, but elemental schools - fire & water & earth & air) but air have own source of temporary gems.

Some have easy, some have hard (like earth that require multi-path) - but have.

Originally posted by ÆtherNomad:

As for your other question, it probably is a spell singing problem, yea.

To make clear - are "normal" spellcasters able to cast 100% cast time spells assaulting forts before fort defenders shots will hit your units?

[kzickas]

Blood stones are definitely harder to forge than clam of pearls. W1N1 is very common. E2B3 is definitely not.

Nations that can easily forge bloodstones without relying on empowering or their pretender: Hinnom, Berythos.

Nations that have a slight chance of being able to forge blood stones without empowering or their pretender:
EA pan (1 in 60 pans), MA pan (1 in 30 pandemoniacs).

Nations that can make clams with recruitable mages and have some astral:
EA arco, EA maverni, EA sauromatia, EA tien chi, EA c'tis, EA niefelheim, EA Kailasa, EA r'lyeh, EA pelagia

MA tien chi, MA c'tis, MA jotunheim, MA bandar log, MA uruk, MA r'lyeh, MA pelagia, MA ys

LA arcoscephale, LA pythium, LA mictlan, LA tien chi, LA jomon, LA utgård, LA patala, LA r'lyeh,

[boozermonkey]

Not much need for air gem items really. Staff of Storms is all that's required to unleash total world domination.

[kzickas]

I like that there aren't. I think it's good for the magic paths to stay distinct.

[Sombre]

I don't think it's intentional. They just never made an item that made air gems.

[kzickas]

Air magic is very hard to build boosters for too. I like to think that it's intentional. Contrast it to water which requires W1 for the gem gen and W1 for the cheapest booster, but water magic is far weaker in combat overall (and there's no pathboosting spell except underwater).

[corisai]

Originally posted by kzickas:

(and there's no pathboosting spell except underwater).

Air boosting spell require :
* cast A4 spell
* cast some global spells
* forge staff of storms (AFAIK - A5 and 40 gems).

Not easy at all too (sure a bit better then water, but still - hard to use in early/mid game).


But please take a note - I don't complain on magic schools balance at all. And don't complain about air booster be expensive too!

I used boosters only as example that overall items that help/boost air magic are expensive and not quite easy to get in mass.

And I just ask why no way to get some temporary air gems exist now - after devs added temporary earth gem.

Sure, if air magic count as that powerfull - this item could be C8 unique (like one of temp fire gems item) or require tons of gems + hard to get magic school combo.

But it should be here - or it's simply no logic in magic items now.

UPD.

Try to describe my initial thoughts more precisely.

Why I started that topic - because air magic mass buffs add unnecessary micro-management in SP (track gems).

For all other elemental schools (and nature too) I can forge some kind of temp gem generator, gear my buffers, script them - and completely ignore micro them. Even if that will be sub-optimal usage of gems.

Air magic don't allow me to remove micro for buffers even in late-game.

Sure, MP balance is important - but devs always can make such generator too expensive and unable to push MP balance a lot.

Before Dom5 it could be seen as design feature - elemental magic working with more robust substances (air & earth) don't have easy way to fuel itself. Now that's aren't answer.

It's mostly question of usability.

[Red_Rob]

Originally posted by Sharkspeare aka Sombre:

I don't think it's intentional. They just never made an item that made air gems.

Several times there have been things that I thought were very clever intentional game design choices in Dominions that have turned out to not be that at all.

In Dom3 I thought it was neat that Blood didn't get a gemgen global whilst the other paths did - of course this makes sense as Blood economies ramp up towards the end game through virtue of their base mechanic, whereas other paths instead have a global they can invest in at high research levels. How asymmetric and cool! Then along comes Dom4 with Blood Vortex...

In Dom4 I initially thought it was odd that Limp or even Crippled slowed you in combat but not on the campaign map, until I realised how annoying it would be to have to ferret out all your limping and crippled units and commanders after every battle to keep your army at top speed. This must have already been considered and gameplay trumped absolute realism! Then along comes Dom5 with the new movement penalties for these injuries...

So, I'd say that Air not getting a tempgem item is deliberate and related to the power of Air as a combat school and the associated difficulty of boosting it compared to other paths (conditional battle booster spell, expensive booster items), but then an Air tempgem item would probably come along in a patch... ;)

[Ica]

Originally posted by corisai:

And I just ask why no way to get some temporary air gems exist now - after devs added temporary earth gem.
...
Before Dom5 it could be seen as design feature - elemental magic working with more robust substances (air & earth) don't have easy way to fuel itself. Now that's aren't answer.

That temp earth gem existed in Dom4 too. It's not a new item.

Anyway I wouldn't mind if there was some inefficient temporary air gem for single players. However, at least in Dom4 there used to be a relatively popular mod that did that. I'm pretty sure it's already converted to Dom5 also, or if it's not, it should be easy to convert.

[kzickas]

There's always been temporary earth gems. Blood stone was one of the items that made permanent gems back in dominions 3. In dominion 4 they did away with gem generators and all the (non-artifact) gem generators were made into temporary gem generators.

I think the only path that's gotten a new temporary gem generator in dominions 5 is nature. I'd rather they didn't, but nature is a weak path and the item requires N3 making it take 7 or 8 battles to pay for itself.8

[wilson.max]

Originally posted by kzickas:

For all other elemental schools (and nature too) I can forge some kind of temp gem generator, gear my buffers, script them - and completely ignore micro them. Even if that will be sub-optimal usage of gems.

3/4 elemental paths (fire, water, earth) have temp gem generators, and 2/4 sorcery paths (astral, nature) have temp gem generators. It's not at all obvious that finishing off the elemental paths (air) should be higher priority than equalizing the sorcery paths (death, blood). Arguably, adding temp gems for air would just make the path imbalance WORSE.

[Mark-R]

Death magic has no temp gem generator.

[Diergato]

I guess blood doesnt't have one either, temp slave generator?