MA Ulm - you called me a forge what?

[Baalz]

Yeah, one thing I didn't mention but probably should, your initial mages you're recruiting should be master smiths, not holy smiths. The upkeep on the holy smiths is lower, and there's a few extra spells they can cast (iron blizzard, etc), but you really want to get those 10% randoms fairly early. Once you've got 3+ castles cranking out smiths and you've got a couple of the randoms you need you can switch to making holy smiths from your capital every turn so you'll have them when you want them for thugs or those spells.