[Squirrelloid]

Chris:
Given that game's assumptions, the only effect which magic paths i put on my pretender had on the first year was how much research he accomplished, so I'm not convinced it matters whether he had Blood or Air for the differences I noticed.

I think investing in some crab hybrids is also a far better use of your cash than illithids. If i dumped 400 (ok, 385) gold into crab hybrids I bet I could pull out 9 or 10 provinces pretty easily, assuming sufficient water provinces are available. (Has been true in every test game i've ran).

The big difference is staying at home means your dominion in your conquered provinces is lower, which means your luck scales don't spread as fast, which leads to substantially fewer beneficial events for you. This in turn leads to significantly fewer gems (even ignoring the lack of site finding in year 1), and significantly less gold (by a factor of 2 or more).

Also, not getting the free underwater fortresses from site searching means no easy early second lab for more starspawn mages/turn.

Manual site searching with a rainbow has a lot of secondary advantages even I didn't fully appreciate before.

(Assuming a purely underwater opening, your minimal rainbow chassis for site searching involves A3E3F1W3S3N2D2. Improve the ones you want involved in a minor bless for your void summons.)