Well, seems like I always get the turnset where I have to deal with the big guys. No problem. If we've stopped it once, we've stopped it a hundred times, as Shagrat used to say. Now what do we have here ?
The War Machine. The Doviello Hero. Very nasty. Looks like the blend between an elephant and a cockroach. But we have some specialized vermin hunters in our line-up, right ?
First of all I find a guy there who is eligible for Fire II. He then casts Fireball (or summons one to be precise) and with it hits the city. Fine, it took 0.6 strength from our uber-cockroach. Now let's see. Losha, want another easy prey ?
He attacks and...
...WTF ????? I can't believe that. Heroes shouldn't be afraid at all. Hm, maybe Losha is female...
Okay, but you remember that the Eidolons saved our a$$ as those horseriders appeared ? Well, we still have those. The odds are not to my liking, but we'll gain at least 20 XP on the victor anyway - and I won't let this Doviello guy hang around in our city.
Our fearless Eidolon walks in and fights the War Machine. He can hardly be seen as he fights, but that doesn't mean his stabs don't hit...
Sorry Mahala. 1 - 0 for us again
.
The rest is just mopup as we recapture our own.
The city capture was not bad after all as we can now transform that spirit node into another one. I take an enchantment node as this cuts our missing mana list to two (Nature and Dimensional).
One gripe: What is the Dragon's Hoard doing in this city ?
It should clearly be at Straatus as this is our shrine and future Bazaar of Mammon city. I've fixed that.
Speaking of money I found that GM who has been around for ages now. As Dis is still mighty big I send him on a trade mission, ending our money woes for a while.
Sheelba comes with a useless trade, I denied as we can research the tech in 2 by ourselves.
I was about to stop here as I spotted another Doviello flotilla:
Well, I might as well deal with it and not leave it to the next player.
However the raiders were not that breath-taking:
They ended as free XP the turn they set foot on our domain.
Mahala then was willing to talk peace at reasonable conditions, and I took the deal. We need to rebuild our empire (we have severe health issues) as well as get a navy going.
And now, fellow students, a quick lesson in dealing with hell terrain in 3 steps:
Step 1: You have Burning Sand/Flames tiles which cause all the trouble because they can't be worked and spread the terrain.
Step 2: You cast Sanctify on it. The Burning Sands/Flames turns into a desert. Only these deserts will burst into flame again, so we have to cast Spring on them to turn them intio a plains tile.
Step 3: Voilà ! The tile will now stay a plains tile. Note that not only Burning Sands/Flames but Burning Sands without flames (for examle after casting Spring
before Sanctifying) too have to be changed like that.
Conclusion:
We are in a very good position. We should now build a navy and adress the health issues. Then we can force access to the two missing nodes by taking on Mahala. If we want to be peaceful we may build the Rites of Oghma. Techs I aquired in my set: Pass through the Ether, Astronomy, Mithril Working (4 turns left). However I traded for Perpentach's spare Mithril so we now have stronger units already.
Please notice: We have a few Mages now, and we have a Summoner and an Archmage. The Archmage can cast Meteor Swarm and Maelstrom, both very powerful spells. Do not lose him and get him together with our main army ! If we go to war, we should keep useless workers in our stacks - that helps against Assassins.
Imhotep
No need to be that ironic. The Vanilla SG will be an attempt to beat Deity with a grace period at the beginning for the humans...
)
I need to play a lot more FfH before I play another SG of it (or play a learning SG). 
Boring turnset. Built some troops and obsidian gates. Cleared some hell terrain. Researched towards Divine Essence for vamp lords. Mahala has enough on her hands again. I think Rights of Oghama is too slow because we can't slave rush it. I think we should attack Sheebla/Sandals instead of Mahala because they are weaker. Finally, here are a couple maps of the other continents.
