early game expansion tactics

Viable options? If you get a Pan with 3 Earth, 3 Nature that is about 95% effective as your pretender with 4 Earth, 4 Nature.

I know the initial urge to find every explored site is very hard to ignore, but it wastes (if you have a national priest who can do it nearly as well) your pretenders time while at the same time could give you little/no results.

You could even have a Pandemoniac casting bowl of blood for you, if you'd like as your Pan searches.

Expansion nets you the territories that you would search. Also, highly searched provinces tend to be juicy targets by opponents (I find it hard not to take provinces with 2+ sites, as soon as I see them).

A more appropriate question would be, what are you going to use your gems on? *and* How fast and how many of these gems do I need in X timeframe?

[ February 12, 2004, 03:18: Message edited by: Zen ]