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.

[WraithLord]

Originally Posted by 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.

I somewhat disagree. I've been experimenting with EA Ulm lately and found out that strong bless and thug holy smiths is a workable combination*. But going for this requires that the holy smiths (shamans) be recruited earlier than the smiths.
Also it is more efficient to start recruiting smiths en mass once you've hit high const. and have significant gem income. This way you'd be recruiting them when they're guaranteed to do what they are good at - forging.

* Actually, I didn't find a lot working for EA Ulm so it was kinda nice surprise to learn that bless and shaman thugs is workable.