Senethro
Overlord
Go to war with whoever has the most cottages. With Raiders trait you can easily get ~150 by pillaging a Town 4 times. The expectation would be that you are not trying to knock them out of the game this time, but simply to gain XP by opportunistic attacks and gold for more Mercs. If you think you can take a city with fewer casualties than you'll be able to buy back with its loot value, then do it. Otherwise, I've got an alternative suggestion that I'm going to link into my tech plan proposal.
Priesthood --> WotW --> Orders from Heaven --> Feudalism (optional) --> Fanaticism (maybe) --> Divination (Build Tower) --> Righteousness (probably not).
Heres my reasons - Mounted units are weak and any improvement they can be given is very valuable. Getting a couple of Stonewardens who add that permanent +10% strength bonus is nice, but not essential. It stacks well on the Aggressive trait. Confessors will be more useful as they add 1 point of strength which is closer to 1.5 given the large numbers of %age promotions Hippus troops have.
I also think Order religion is a better fit as its cheaper to research, its temples and priests have better abilities than Empyrean and it has a Mounted hero. Its also a low effort religion - it spreads fast by itself and Acolytes spreading their religion often create a free Acolyte, who can spread his religion creating a free Acoyte...
Feudalism may or may not be a useful technology. My hope is that with long wars where veteran mercs are able to pillage everything but can't take cities, is that the Hippus army will continually grow while all others will shrink and become XP fodder for the mercs. The Hippus rating on the power graph may eventually become so high that CPU players will vassalise even without the loss of their core cities. Feudalism enables vassalisation.
Additionally, Feudalism enables Royal Guards - a mounted national unit. They'll be 6/10 with Iron weapons, which will be useful but lets examine their spell. Hope adds culture and Happiness which is useful for assimilating newly captured cities. Units in the city also gain the permanent Courage promotion. A little known effect of Courage is that units heal an extra 10% per turn, which I think works even while moving (can someone confirm?). Even if mobility promoted Confessors are used to heal and Bless the Mercs, I'm sure they'll be spending some turns unsupported and doubling the heal rate in enemy territory has helped me a lot.
Fanaticism probably isn't important. Instead of getting free Acolytes when Order spreads, you start getting free Crusaders. Probably not worth the cost, but worth remembering.
Divination --> Righteousness: If the game isn't over by now, theres not been enough killing! I think researching this tech would be a waste of beakers. But given that we may have a lot of Great Engineers shortly, why not build the Tower of Divination and pop it that way? Its a Tier 4 with few pre-requisites, making it easy to rush. It has an adaquate hero and 4 very high strength city crackers.
Priesthood --> WotW --> Orders from Heaven --> Feudalism (optional) --> Fanaticism (maybe) --> Divination (Build Tower) --> Righteousness (probably not).
Heres my reasons - Mounted units are weak and any improvement they can be given is very valuable. Getting a couple of Stonewardens who add that permanent +10% strength bonus is nice, but not essential. It stacks well on the Aggressive trait. Confessors will be more useful as they add 1 point of strength which is closer to 1.5 given the large numbers of %age promotions Hippus troops have.
I also think Order religion is a better fit as its cheaper to research, its temples and priests have better abilities than Empyrean and it has a Mounted hero. Its also a low effort religion - it spreads fast by itself and Acolytes spreading their religion often create a free Acolyte, who can spread his religion creating a free Acoyte...
Feudalism may or may not be a useful technology. My hope is that with long wars where veteran mercs are able to pillage everything but can't take cities, is that the Hippus army will continually grow while all others will shrink and become XP fodder for the mercs. The Hippus rating on the power graph may eventually become so high that CPU players will vassalise even without the loss of their core cities. Feudalism enables vassalisation.
Additionally, Feudalism enables Royal Guards - a mounted national unit. They'll be 6/10 with Iron weapons, which will be useful but lets examine their spell. Hope adds culture and Happiness which is useful for assimilating newly captured cities. Units in the city also gain the permanent Courage promotion. A little known effect of Courage is that units heal an extra 10% per turn, which I think works even while moving (can someone confirm?). Even if mobility promoted Confessors are used to heal and Bless the Mercs, I'm sure they'll be spending some turns unsupported and doubling the heal rate in enemy territory has helped me a lot.
Fanaticism probably isn't important. Instead of getting free Acolytes when Order spreads, you start getting free Crusaders. Probably not worth the cost, but worth remembering.
Divination --> Righteousness: If the game isn't over by now, theres not been enough killing! I think researching this tech would be a waste of beakers. But given that we may have a lot of Great Engineers shortly, why not build the Tower of Divination and pop it that way? Its a Tier 4 with few pre-requisites, making it easy to rush. It has an adaquate hero and 4 very high strength city crackers.