Useful Tips for The House Ecaz
The sanctuaries and masterpieces in combination are kind of insane.
You can easily stack village traits quite high that way… (1 or 2 from santuaries, one from the +trait-building, 1 from 3 masterpieces plus fortress building when you don’t need the slots for something else) – and the masterpieces count double for stuff that counts buildings.
So got a spot with +3 solari per eco building? Get windtraps, the +trait-building, 2 eco-masterpieces and a different one(for the 3), and it counts as 5 buildings. With the trait stacked 4 or 5 times that’s 60-75 solari from what i consider one of the weaker village traits.
If you have a territory with 2 useful traits, it can be totally worth playing around that.
And it works across the board, the extra manpower or solari if all types of buildings? Stack them up and you have a recruitment center costing nothing with extra benefits.
The best thing is: By selectively leaving gaps(that cannot be attacked by enemies) you end up not owning so many villages that the authority cost escalates, you can cover quite a large territory, and also selectively liberate enemy territories after circling around to instantly add ones up front.
The Garden upgrade is tempting to use in a spot with many sanctuaries for the extra knowledge, but imho that’s a trap. I use it militarily, after getting the research that boosts militia within 2 territories from it. It goes on the front line, making authority costs nearby cheaper and strenghtening defenses.
Fencers seem quite useless, with their focus on acting alone – don’t like them. I also try to always “overtrain” when there is no hurry for fast reinforcements.
So far, there’s a few things I’d prefer to be different(fencers, the youngest daughter advisor(likely will never use her – sure I could first take the future sanctuary territory, load it with masterpieces, then abandon, but that just seems like extra work for a little bit of authority. Possibly strong, but only relevant when I already snowballed with the help of the other advisors picked). maybe some different handling or mechanic with sietches in sanctuaries.)
But it’s been quite fun playing the house.
I won my first game with the new house by domination. There’s probably a lot of ways to play the house but what made sense to me was that I can’t well win if:
1) I don’t have enough raw resources (water, solari, placrete, manpower, fuel cells, et cetera)
2) I can’t defend myself
Monuments, sanctuaries, and resorts then were there to augment my already solid core of territory.