Should improving Arcoscephale Golden Era be a priority?

[Norfleet]

Different, yes. Weaker...not really. You give up the Astrologer, and his full random pick, but you do gain the Philosophers, which are excellent researchers, and the very nice Engineers, a great boon to my castle stalling tactics...alas, they tend to be capitol only and move slowly, but I can forge flying shoes to get them to the front. The only annoyance is the difficulty in making them stop showing up when I press "n", but I get around this by assigning them to untrained blood hunt duty to keep them out of my way.

Yeah, the troops are nigh-unaffordable, and often capitol only as well. So what? It's not a troop theme, obviously.