[SelfishGene]

EA Arco is one of my favorite themes, but i really think minimizing Philosophers is the wrong way to go. Philosophers are one of the most potent human units in the game; there is no other way to get 10 research points so cheap, so quickly early on. Making 8 or 10 philosophers early in the game w/ 3 sloth 3 magic will give you a very large leg up on research that will be hard to match.

I guess the idea is, while having lots of Mystics is good, what's the point of having them if you can't cast anything? Drain-2 is wrong for a lot of reasons, mainly because it goes counter to the magic heavy nature of Arco, and because it makes Mystics just that much worse at research, forcing you to depend even more heavily on your Philosophers, that at the same time, will be less than optimal.

Arco's early troops are versatile but specialized. I like Icarids as raiders but they aren't front line troops, and like Myrmiddons, they are hard to mass.