[thejeff]

Taking a strong bless conflicts with turtling. The main benefit from a bless comes early. There are more counters as more magic is researched. And the bless comes at the expense of scales which would help a turtler, bringing in more money and growing population. Bad scales mean you need to expand faster just to stay even.

Getting a research lead is good, but it means nothing without the gems to support it. Which means territory, which means wars. Or it means clams. I still maintain that the turtling strategy in dominions is based around clams. Strong defense may discourage attack, good research is needed, but can often be gotten through items, but gems producing items are the only way to expand your economy without expanding territory.