Balancing Very Early Research and Site Searching

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by AreaOfEffect

Chris, Funny you should mention EA Ermor. That is precisely the nation I used to flush out the tactic described above.

I used my great sage (vanilla) pretender to research while I regularly sent out Augur Elders to site search. What made the strategy synergistic was that, while searching, the elders were also able to support expansion as viable combat mages. With combat mages out on the field casting spells like fire darts on turn 2, fireball by turn 7, and raise dead by turn 12, I was assured that I would have both the gems and the power to defend myself. It gave me better expansion, the number one spot on gems by the first year, and gave me the number 2 spot on research (beaten by another awake rainbow). Also, like I said before, it helped to economize my god's own site searching by allowing him to focus on provinces that hadn't turned up sites yet.

You might disagree with me, but it would be hard for you to convince me its a bad idea considering I've seen the results first hand and found it to my liking.

Well, we agree on many things. I have no problem getting 16+ territories with ermor without combat mages the first year.
To me the problem with ermor is no middle game - one way to address that is summons.

Now, the most important way is via death - which can be accomplished with national mages. Ermor has week or no access to WANB - so its generally useful to have those paths on the pretender.