Most godly start I've seen...

[rgp151]

I started this game a couple of days ago. I took the screen shot several turns in. Not only did I have 3 sorcery nodes nearby, each of which only had Phantom Warriors or Nagas in them, but I started as pure Sorcery with Conjuration and Sorcery Mastery, so it was easy to take them. On top of that, very early on, like 5 turns in, I got Suri the hero. Also, don't know if you noticed, but there is Silver in the mountains as well. So it was +6 gold and Wild Game.

   

The first blue dot to the west of the capital was a natural Nomad town with a default max pop of 22. Oh, also I was High Men to start. The second blue dot to the west was Rajak's capital (Klackons). I was able to take him out before he even established a single settlement. I actually conquered him with a Magic Spirit. I think that when I had gotten all three nodes I put most of my power into increasing Casting Skill, so I was able to drop like 6 or 7 Phantom Warriors on Rajak with a Magic Spirit. 

Needless to say I quickly ran away with this game. It was on 1.5 Hard only, though I wish I could have played this start out on Extreme.

[Anskiy]

Quite the start indeed. And what about that gold income? That surely can't be just from your capital.

[rgp151]

Quite the start indeed. And what about that gold income? That surely can't be just from your capital.

This was several turns in. I'm not sure how many turns exactly. You can see I have 5 total cities. It was the enemy wizard's capital and three neutral cities, plus my capital. But this was not that many turns in, it went pretty fast. I think I took all of the neutral cities with a Magic Spirit. This was Sorcery with Conjuration and Sorcery Mastery, so Phantom Warriors only cost 4 to summon. That was the key to the start. Once I got the nodes I upped my casting skill a little and was able to cast 5 per combat within a few turns. I think I started with 18 Skill and just had to get it to 20.