The Avian Cleric

(Age 52)
The Avian is not a very hot race right now but it certainly has very interesting capabilities. It’s attack time is considerably shorter then that of other races.
And Speed is very often the key in warfare. Somewhere i have the Art of War lying around, i should quote from it. Sun Tzu said it much better. Nowadays there are many interesting forms of attack: massacre, learn, plundertraditional march. So this increased speed not only brings in a lot of additional land but can also help to built up your province in other way’s.

Now halfway through the age especially the learn attack becomes a more viable tool. The massacre has it’s place in war/hostile’s and the plunder givesa lot of extra resources. Especially when combined with a targetfinder like targetfinder.eu which allows to search for inactive provinces!

You have a 8/3 Elite at your service and having it fly right back to base at the speed it does has it’s upside as it can serve as defense. You can retaliate for a mate and have your troops back to base before his do. Or Hell you could possible strike him twice before he returns!

To make the maximum use of these tools and your increased attack speed we chose to play a cleric in combination with Avian. The -50% casualties combined with the very affordable elites at only $500 much less viable. The extra general is a nice +3% to offense and the the troop losses allow for more quick rebuilding but is not a key in this setup.

10% farms
10% guilds
6% towers
4% dungeons
15% training grounds
12% barracks
8% forts
20% homes
10% schools

The farms, guilds and towers are in there to cover the basics. Then we have some dungeon’s to profit from the large amount of prisoner’s we take by constantly attacking.
The training ground’s effectively decrease your losses further and are also quite NW efficient as long as you run a decent offense compared to defense. We capped them at 15 because they give decreased returns and we also like forts for their NW/efficiency and because the bonus they provide makes your 8/3 elites quite an annoying enhancement to defense when they return home.
The barracks are in there to increase the speed of your fleet of fighters to mach3. Depending on circumstances, like your personal life and whether there is a war going on ingame or you are under different pressure you can increase or decrease them.
Then there are some homes to help you with economy later in the game. They help you BE to remain decent while being able to draft a large military. The schools are in there as I always assume decent sciences this late in the age. If you have not, take more advantage of the speed of your fighters and send out for learns, learns, learns.