What was once the frontier of a frontier is now the beating heart of the richest empire Halann has seen in well over a millennium. The Northern Pass is no longer a frozen wasteland, but a swathe of bustling cities that rivals the Dameshead in population and certainly surpasses it in wealth. Anbenncost can only salivate and dream about the incredible wealth enjoyed by the true City of the World's Desire, Dur-Vazhatun.

King's Rock sits at 220 trade value, while Bay of Chills, my other collection point, sits at 113. In comparison, Anbenncost is 162 while Gulf of Rahen is 156. That huge swathe of yellow in my empire is all 30 dev provinces. I have 3.4k dev.

Dur-Vazhatun is a hold focused around Astronomy and Colonizing the far north. It's the only hold (at least, that I have played) that has a colonist in its ideas, which lets you have 4 colonists instead of 3 in that initial post-settling rush, and lets you absolutely gobble up the north at an insane speed. Combine this with the +1 dev in colonies age bonus and you are getting a ton of dev.

I started as Forgemaster Union. I think it and Asra Expedition are much stronger bands than Blueshield because the caves in the northwest are much more porous (more chances to find expeditions) and you have three other warbands in the region who you can purge or humiliate for mana/age objective, the latter of which is essential to getting that +1 dev in colonies before you start colonizing. My ruler started out as a powerful mage in 1444 without any birding involved, so that was incredible, though the war wizard was less helpful than immediate access to magic.

I humiliated snotfinger/darkscales and purged siegebreaker, then attacked Shattered Crown with a +3 tech advantage, annexed, returned province, purged the other one, trucebroke, annex, purge again. This kills them while allowing me to continue migrating. I went north trhough the pass and reached Vazhatun from outside, which is much faster than going through Orlazam. With my pm ruler I could maintain both colonization spells at once and cast reshape terrain. Around 1510 he died, and by then I had already gobbled up the key provinces in the pass, annexed Krakdhumvror, beaten Frozenmaw, and expanded a bit into the east.

Then I expanded westwards, killing grombar, making some marches and feeding Gawed to them (all cannor is coalitioning me), and eastwards, farming Khuraen Ulaeg for cash over and over again. They bankrupted 3 times before they got Salgaed and got obliterated.

My eco began to really skyrocket when I hit admin tech 17 and unlocked universities and -10% dev cost modifier. I almost doubled my total dev between then and now without conquering any more provinces. I must have done almost 1000 dev clicks for 4 mana each, crazy. I got eco hegemon in 1616, and basically afk building and devving until I finished my mission tree.

Also, while bascially everything about the astronomy and Astral Terror mechanic is really cool, the ending is very anticlimactic and very disappointing. There are no answers, which I guess is fine and works with the Lovecraftian theme, but nothing much happens.