Your Top Ten Tips for Your Favorite Civ

Xivan T`nava - Specifically for his charlatan ability. Charismatic is nice for getting high level units faster too

Scions get +1 production from desert now, which should help out your starting location a bit, but you`ll still want water mana to change all of that to plains eventually (so you don`t get burning sands). They can still build reborn, I think, but it won`t matter with what we`re going to do here.

What we are aiming to do is create a world filled with disease, the 4 horsemen and lots of hell terrain, all being fueled by Eidolons with Swords of Klarkash. So your first techs should be to research masonry and build a worker (to get those patrian artifacts) then towards mysticism and switch to god king (also gives you their unique unit). After this get some basic economy techs, and pump out a great sage (you might want to hold on to it) research towards way of the earthmother (you don't need to found it) and arete for mine's of galdur

Next you'll want to research towards corruption of spirit to found ashen veil. If you are beat to it, you`ll probably have to capture it later on.. might be worth a reload at this point though.Once you get your Stigmata built, you are ready to set about conquering and probably start the production of a great engineer. Diseased corpses make for good basic attack units early on. Next you'll want to research priesthood then Infernal Pact. Start researching towards Fanaticism while you`re building the infernal grimoire (and stop it partway if you would otherwise build it first). Make sure you are razing any city you find and setting the reborn back to your capital (or other cities). The faster you can get to 30 armegeddon counter, the better.

If you`ve managed to survive long enough to build Eidolons you probably also have your great engineer. Save him to build a master smith in one of your cities. Next, build out 4 Eidolons from whatever city you have your Stigmata in, then you can trigger your charlatan ability, this will give your eidolons the ability to use weapon bonuses (so iron weapons in this case). Your next line of research should be necromany then elementalism and arcane lore. After you get arcane lore you can send your units back to the city to equip swords of klarkesh. You`ll want 1 water mana and as much entropy mana as you can find. The water mana is to change all your land to plains so it doesn`t become useless burning sands. The entropy is to beef up your Eidolon`s. Which should already be 18 str (+1 from entropy, +2 from iron weapons) + x% of half of whatever the armegeddon counter is at. Have fun razing and stomping the land with your uber eidolons that will just keep getting stronger.

Another alternative research path would be to iron working instead of arete (not too bad a choice considering the unit line you get with the scions) then engineering, and pick up mithril working with the grimoire, and research to the eidolons the old fashioned way. Will take a little longer but you`ll get starting 20 strength Eidolons instead of 18. There are two seperate notes here.. the first is not to build the Eidolons directly. Either build a spiritualist (recommened) and upgrade, or build a diseased corpse, buy it the plate upgrade, then upgrade it (only do this if you`ve gotten mithril working first though, or you`ll just lose it). Note this can also make your eidolon`s strong but I don`t think it`s worth the penalty of being affected by undead type spells.