Jomon advice wanted

[MaxWilson]

Micah said:
If you don't have an awake SC you need to have an imprisoned bless chassis (and good units to use it with, Jomon's don't qualify), which is also confined to a handful of different choices.

Is that really true? Bless is just a way of boosting certain unit stats so you get more killing power for a given pound of gold. If you have good, solid national troops, they can expand quite well even if they're not sacred. Functionally-speaking, a dual F9W9 bless in the early game is just a way of killing indies faster and more efficiently. You can get the same effect on expansion in some cases by having a 50% larger army from good scales. This is especially true if your army has access to good missile weapons, which scale better than footmen in heavy plate. (LA Agartha is lots of fun with a good bless but in practice armies of crossbowmen with some light infantry guards expand better than uber-blessed Blindfighters.)

Consider how valuable mercs are for expansion, and then consider that most mercs are pretty average as national troops go--and they're almost never used with a bless.

-Max