[Squirrelloid]

End of Year 1 Synopsis:

Gem Income: Significantly lower (Tiamat just coming online at the start of year 2)
Income: Significantly lower (not province related - see below)
Provinces: About the same (8 instead of 6, but weaker independents overall - ichthyids instead of shamblers and tritons is a big difference)
Research: About the same (Conj 3 1/2 / Evoc 2 / Thaum 1 not in that order)
Fortresses: Significantly lower (1)
Temples: Significantly more (3) - but i needed them to start boosting dominion (did not need in other set up).
Laboratories: No new labs (vs. 1 in the other set up).
Commanders: Significantly fewer mages (no second recruitment center)

Lets talk about a big difference between a mobile pretender and a static pretender - dominion spread. Most of my provinces had 5+ dominion in the other set up because the pretender visited all of them and got 2 turns of dominion spread checks in each one.

Why is that so important for this set up? Because you really need to spread those luck scales. I saw substantially fewer events than in the other game, and substantially less cash and gems from events because I didn't have the luck scales in most of my provinces. A mere 1k gold and two death gem events for a whole year.

About those 8 illithid troops:
They didn't help the army expand for longer. 3 provinces and they needed to be resupplied with troops (chaffe screen entirely gone). Indeed, one could probably say that I took more provinces because this map made resupply easier. In fact, I think they took *more* losses than my initial expansion squad from the other game while taking those first 3 provinces against *weaker* opposition, with only the illithids surviving. (Other game's expansion squad was initial troops + 2 crab troops, 2 atlantian slave troops, 2 13 resource atlantian troops, 1 lobo - 120 gold worth of troops because i also started with a mage).

In virtually all ways this start was worse by a substantial amount.

(oh, for what its worth, starspawn priests are research 6 in Mg3, while starspawn mages are research 10 or 11 (1/10)).