Jomon advice wanted

[MaxWilson]

Pablomatic said:
I've read some posts that claim MP boils down to a "rush for Tartarians." With everybody going for more or less the same spells and everybody having a Cyclops pretender or something similar, I'm not sure I'll enjoy MP as much as I had hoped. I'll try it out and see. I'd like to be the one who surprises my opponents with an effective ORIGINAL strategy. Is that a losing cause?

I have found that Tartarians are great for 1.) giving death/nature nations access to earth/fire/astral/air, 2.) supercombatant duty. In the end game, SCs largely replace national armies, in the sense that SCs can be easily and trivially beaten by mages, but can also easily and trivially beat mages (depends on the tactics each side chooses), and SCs can easily and trivially beat armies while armies have a tough time beating mages (with a small army to support them). What I'm trying to say here is that Tartarian access is an escalation in the use of force, not a bland "I win" card that makes all end games look the same. Still, I like the upcoming Tartarian nerf because it's thematic, and I'm certainly sympathetic to the idea that endgames are boring. Mine would be if I didn't make them fun, because I play against the AI.

-Max