Introduction

I find the Allayi a quite interesting faction to play with. They play VERY different than other factions. You must adjust your gameplay a lot. Here are some tips I 'discovered' with my several games with the Allayi. Any extra tip you consider will be welcome (sorry for my English, I'm not english native please forgive any funny sentences).

How to minimize the drawbacks

Population and expansion penalties

150% extra disapproval on expansion and 100% extra need for pop growth is absolutely game-changing, you just have to keep your empire small until you are sure you can expand and keep the empire happy. The difference in income from a fervent to content happpiness is 30% in all incomes (FIDSI), and it will block the faction quest progression.

- CONSIDER even keeping only one-two cities for a long time if nearby luxuries wont keep you in the green zone.

- 'Language square' research to use parley and bribe is more important than ever for those extra pop from villages, specially handy early and specially powerful due the fact your pop will grow slowly.

Problems with pearl dependency

While you can get lots of pearls compared to other factions, pearl investment in district expansion is quite hard. With each new district (Garth of the Allayi) the pearl cost is increased, and you have to work around this issue and get the best of your pearl investment and decent sized cities. You will also want to invest pearls in blessings and stockpiles, so you have to keep special attention to the pearl management.

- A great solution is to get an Allayi hero for cities ASAP to get their special ability to cut down pearl cost in buildings (Zealous hands). With the L2 skill cuts 40% of the pearl cost for buildings in cities, something you can't ignore (you can move it from city to city each 5 turns after all). I prefer to keep the starting hero for scouting all the time, but keep this into consideration, as you may consider to use your hero for both scouting and pearl buidings if you are unlucky with the heros at the marketplace.

- Also is important to place cities with as much resources/anomalies near as possible, using them later as districts will significantly cut down pearl investment (and they're powerful districts on their owns). This districts cost always 400 production an 10 pearls, and doesn't count for the Garth of the Allayi increasing cost. Please be specially careful placing cities, good FIDS at the beginning is not as important, you can rush initial buildings with the scouting abilities.

- Also consider using the pearl accesory 'Eyes of auriga' to gain Auriga affinity 3 (30% more pearl gather), or get the hero skill 'Improved auriga affinity' to L2 to do so. Get pearls with skyfin as a priority if you don't have improved auriga affinity or the accessory in a hero. During the quests you will get 20% cost reduction for unlocking pearl techs (blessings), is also important carefully select wich blessings you unlock and when to save some extra pearl costs.

- Once most of the map is covered, getting allies will give you access to their pearls, even if they are not happy with it, you may consider stealing the pearls from an ally doing it.

- (Against computers only) Don't overdo it gathering pearls, as pearls will grow with winter and the AI won't focus on gathering pearls. Consider giving preference to the absorb ability and exploring shrines.

Faction Benefits

HUGE exploration abilities.

You can scout the entire world much faster than any other faction, so you can quickly explore the entire map if you focus on it. Shifter nature ability gives extra movement point on winter and no movement reduction. Your faction hero has the movement + vision abilities for being a ranged hero type, plus the Pathfinder ability that ignores terrain cost. The skyfin unit has 8 movement on top of being a flying unit (bust be solo in an army like guardians).

- Advance in the faction quest progression as fast as you can: you will get a skyfin early in the game. One of the quests will demand you to keep fervent in all cities, so keep cities happy to advance through this one. You could also aim to get the Glorius Farther as soon as you hit Era IV.

- Huge scouting means LOTS of money early, so make the best use of it rushing early buildings that take too many turns. A good tactic is to give preference in scouting on other players territories and surroundings, as their will claim those lands later and you could get closed borders if you mess too much in their territory or steal their pearls.

Skyfin unit

Due to the huge versatility of the skyfin, consider getting a second one sooner than later, it will help in exploring, resource gathering, pearl gathering and is great as combat support.

- Aspirate ability: Placing a skyfin on top of a strategic resource / luxury at the end of the turn will give you 2 units per turn. Consider ending the movement on this resources when exploring, and it's a great option for luxuries without improvements even on other player lands, or a quick resource gathering once you get access to new luxuries. Can't be used on improved resources. I also important that Skyfins will never be attacked by roaming minions, and that their Aspirate ability provides approval in case we own a city in the region.

- Skyfin and battlefield symbiosis: upping the units morale has the double effect of getting better initiative on top of better attack/defense values. Skyfin can up your morale with their support action in bright form, please take into account this for battles, and keep a tight formation if you want that extra initiative.

- Mercurial diplomats trait is not much relevant, but consider to make treaties during summer and war declarations during winter to save some influence points.

Luxury alchemists and Stockpiles

'Luxury alchemists' once researched will give you 2 extra turns for luxuries for each extra active luxury after the first, so you will get 12 turns for the third luxury you activate and increases 2 turns with each new one. The skill has a hidden effect (maybe is a bug but right now is working that way) with stockpiles, so once you get 20 turns for a luxury activation you also get a extended duration from this stockpiles (two turns). If you manage toget 30 turns for luxuries, you will also get three turns from the stockpile boost, making stockpiles better than ever once you can abuse them due to their extended duration.

- To get the most of this feature, extend the duration of your luxuries BEFORE they run out. Is not much, but will provide an extra two turns for the otherwise reactivated luxuries.

- Getting 'imperial coinage' for luxuries from the marketplace gets additional relevance. Getting forgetable but cheap tier one luxuries just to increase the really relevant luxuries is a nice strategy.

Stockpile power

You start with a base 100 production/food/research for each stockpile but with 'unskilled labor', each stockpile counts as +500 (at the cost of 1200 production), and with 'organized labor' it will count as +1000 (at the cost of 2500 prod), up to 1600 boost with both researched. Once you have the stockpiles, any stockpile will get the boost for all of them even if they were created with a cheaper version. So you can normally create a stockpile with unskilled labor researched, at the cost of 1200 production, and later, once you get to research organized labor, this stockpiles will return 1600 industry/food/science.

Stockpiles are available on market, usually for 400-500 gold each, and up to 10 of each type, so they are a good purchase once you get your first boost, and an incredible boost with all stockpile boosts.

With all the pearly features, we get another profitable step (for every faction), that is the Pearl hoarding blessing: this one will enable a player to create stockpiles starting at the first winter, at the cost of 100 production and 8 pearls. So you get 600 production later with unskilled labor tech. You can still save some production at the cost of 600 production and 8 pearls to get the super-boost later with organized labor.

On top of this stockpile tricks, you get the extra time boost from the 'luxury alchemists' trait with enough luxuries activated, so you can plan and abuse stockpiles much better than any other faction!

Thanks for reading this guide, I hope it helps you to tame this peculiar faction.

Good job!



It´s nice to note that Skyfins will never be attacked by roaming minions, and that their Aspirate ability provides approval in case there´s a city in the region.

Yeah, thanks, I'll add those notes for the Skyfin. I also discovered you get +1 turn on stockpiles at 16/26/36 turns luxury length, going up to 4 turns per use (!!!) if you manage to have nearly all luxuries activated!! I'll report it as a bug, is just too powerful.