Ilians - begginers tips

Ur_Vile_Wedge said:

While it's never good to be on the defensive, temples can make a great scorched (frozen!) earth tactic. You're about to lose a city? Rush a temple of the hand, turn it into garbage for everyone else. It's also fun when you have border cities and culture wars up against someone you aren't quite ready to go to war with. That ice extension will go into other people's lands and ruin their cities

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Yep I tried that the other day.
Not to mention, it does have a psychological impact on other human players.
They stare at all the snow on your border cities and..... ewwww pick another juicier target.
And having a few snow covered border cities allows your Assassins to hide themselves before they wander out to seek out targets to kill, and useful in defense when you have hidden assassins running about in the snow (not to mention the snow bonus the Illians get).