Ashdod is worthless now

[Starbelly Geek]

Originally Posted by Corinthian

And that brings me tho the third problem with thugging with Ashdod. Namely the fact that Ashdod have terrible site searchers. Your best bet is to recruit Zamzummites and hope you get one with multiple paths. To sitesearch with your researchers would require a giant congaline due to them only having one path each. You can sire search remotely but that costs gems and although this is the most efficient method in the long run, those are gems you cant spend on gear for thugs.

So... awake rainbow, then?

Originally Posted by Corinthian

Another problem is the fact that you are not going to see any Ashdod thugs before the end of year 2. Not only does ashdod have some truly mediocre researchers, they also need to recruit priests for their expansion parties.

Why would they need to do that? Their non-sacred troops rock pretty hard against most indies. I'd be nervous going against wolf tribes or lizards, but most of the rest is pretty handlable, including barbarians. Ashdod's non-sacred troops are better than Hinnom's.
While the troops are conquering, your mages aren't going to outpace Tien Chi in research, but they should be able to hold their own with a M1 scale.