I thought Astral was well covered by the monkeys so I'd branch Rainbow Granny out into other areas. This doesn't explain why I gave her 4 Nature. Perhaps I should have said in the opening post that I've played a fair bit, but still have lots to learn
Man is the other human player and he went a Crone pretender as well. He said he went Astral, Air and Water. As said in the first post, he's very new to Dom 3 but you wouldn't know by the way he's playing, as will be shown the indies have proven no worries and I think he's well poised to stomp the easy AI's.
Updates:
Turn 13 rolls around and Rainbow Granny, Lady of Many Titles Given Her Starting Dominion wakes (see previous post). She sets out site searching, for as long as her withered legs allow.
On turn 15 we spy Marignons pretender:
A Cyclops. Maybe too tough for Man at this stage? I'm sure the AI won't have given it a weapon and shield but its kinda tough enough at this stage not to need it if it has an army with it.
On turn 16 Atlantis is found:
Geez it has not done much!
On turn 19 vs an indie province our prophet (with +6 invigoration) switches from Smite spammer to ghostly dual wielding ape of limited death!
Got to love the Dom 3 possibilities
Turn 19 marks when we decide to attack Machaka to stomp their temple. We bring up a second army from the home castle to increase options.
The temple gets the raw end of an elephants foot and Machaka captures 2 of our provinces. We decide to send the first army to shut down recruitment at Machakas (lone) castle and send the second army to the province north of the castle, expecting Machaka to attack there.
Machaka does attack that province and its this:
vs this:
Poor lone spider rider.....
The attack on Machakas castle is a success but the walls are being repaired quicker than they are pulled down. No worries, his economy is stuffed and that was the short term goal.
On turn 21 a Guru summons these:
Totally at risk of pointy objects falling from the sky, I wouldn't even trust their Awe (0) to save them from too much. At least the have the standard effect, might help keep the monkeys from running away.
I'm setting up to move a bigger army to the Machaka castle when look who turns up:
No! Not Father Ted! What level of priest would Ted be? Would he even be Holy 1? He would definitely come with the Holy Stone of Clonrichert item
Bogus!!!!!
Up to turn 23 and all is well. Charts:
Provinces:
Man is supposed to be the noob and he's in the lead. Great effort!
Forts, Man and I have 2 and the AI's have 1.
Income:
I take it the -30% income penalty for easy AI is reflected on the charts.
Gem Income:
Rainbow Granny's site searching is paying off.
Research:
Go Man!
Dominion, to save a chart who cares about dominion? In this game its not important. Actually early in the game I saw Man building a temple and suggested to him he spends the gold on troops and forts (just remembered they are not called castles). Then I realised Man has temples at 200 gold, pretty cheap. Any opinions on early investment in temples when they are this cheap?
Army size:
Not much to say about this, except perhaps that there is no Better AI mod in play so how much of what the AI has is just chaff? I'm Bandar Log so how much of what I have is chaff? Answer: most of it
Finally the world as it is known, and my gem stocks:
Cheers for the comments