Opening Gambit

[triqui]

Originally Posted by Zorfwaddle

All, thank you for the constructive criticism :-) I do see what you are saying about "all eggs in one basket"

Fact is, unless your mage has two heads and the ability to act twice in a round, it's completelly useless for them to be able to cast Fireball (or whatever other spell he is able to) and Smite at the same time. He will use one, or the other, not both in the same round, so it's much better to have the commander be the prophet and cast the smites while your mage do it's stuff

@JB I usually get at least one province where I can recruit indy scouts pretty quick, then I can switch to just recruiting researchers. [...]

If you don't recruit an scout in turn 2, you don't really lose that much, becouse as you say, you ussually are able to recruit indy scouts pretty quick from outside your castles. However, if you don't recruit a mage in turn 2, and that mage can research, say, 7 per turn, you'll be losing 84 research at the end of first year, 160+ at the end of second year, and 240+ at the end of third year. That's a pernament disventage: those are 1, 2 or 3 levels in magic that you wont have, and you won't be able to recover if you miss the chance to buy that mage in turn 1.
If you happen to buy 2,3,4 or more mages in the first turns, then the mistake compounds and you lose even more research. That research lost outweight, by FAR any extra adventage you might get from having a scout one or two turns earlier.