[Poopsi]

One observation, HB:

At any given moment, the number of Ancient Lords you can outfit for battle will be limited by (assuming an unlimited disposable ammount of gems) the number of mages you have. This basically means oracles. This limits escalation of the operations, because even if you can build, say, ten Ancient Lords a turn, you wont be able to outfit ten ancient lords a turn.

This being so, why use ancient lords at all (except maybe as a thug), and not go for Oracles as SCs? (with boots of youth, I agree about their importance) Their self-buffing provides extra advantages, imho