[KissBlade]

If you want to bless your mages, I recommend going e8 with your cyclops,dominion 10, order 3, sloth 3, heat 2, death 3, misfortune 2, magic 3 OR take dom 9 and e9. It's definitely a viable alternate opening as you can easily solo with your cyclops turn 2 this way. I can probably add this into the guide as well and update it but you'll also be playing your game slightly different. For one, you can skip the entire alteration tree, which is a plus. You'll have to jump into evocation instead which isn't bad since you have to get it eventually anyway. You'll be relying on nagarishis more whlie using gurus for research instead. You're also trading off by having a weaker position from turn 12-20 roughly but having a much stronger turn 1-12. It's difficult to measure efficiency later game, since VQ SC is always useful but so is e8 or e9 bless. However, relief + summon earthpower does take a lot of burden off any fatigue from battle magic vs. the extra slots you'll be spending to script bless. As I've said, it's definitely a viable alternative but hard to say which one is better. Your strategy with expansion and mercs should still remain relatively the same however.

Edit: Actually in competitive setting the cyclops build will probably be stronger since most current LE games are indie 5 and the stronger early game a cyclops gives you under those settings will most likely be too good an advantage to pass up. A VQ does allow to cover up a bumpy road however since you can avoid tough indies that a cyclops or an army wouldn't normally be able to take and the VQ can wreck them later. Also the cyclops is a somewhat overused chassis while you'll rarely get to use the VQ. =)