[Micah]

K, I wasn't saying to skip construction, just that I'd skip it as the FIRST research target. You're right, there are a lot of good items to be had there, I was just guessing that you'd get a lot more use out of it once your gem income had time to mature. 2 gems per battle for FA is 5 major battles on turn 10, which is plenty, just with cap income, and leaves you with 3/4ths of your gems, vs 4 eyes of the void with only half your gems left (6 if you alch all of your gems). The other benefit from FA is you can plan for it ahead of time by sending out a mage with your xbow army, put some gems on a scout and put it into play immediately when the research is hit, whereas eye spam requires a turn of forging once the research is done, and then getting all of your priests to a lab (or holding still for a turn and spending 500g to build one) to get their eyes poked out.

Fire storm is the first late game tactic you shoot for, I didn't mean to imply that it was a good idea to research straight up to it, as it's far too much research. My research path would probably be enchant 4 > conj3/evo4/cons4 in circumstance-determined order > evo 7. The whole reason I was assuming that you had the gems to power it is because it's a later-game tactic when your gem income should be a lot more healthy.

I didn't realize that communions also distributed the master's spellcasting encumbrance, thanks for pointing that out. That's a good catch and makes a shield a viable option. Still spendy at 25 gems, but if you've got the gems to burn it's probably worth slapping on. (I admit I know next to nothing about communions, I never bother with them)