Using ∑∫ỹriȱŋ
As mentioned before, if you want to use the general roadmap for the ∑∫ỹriȱŋ, go ahead! It should work fine, but there’s more to the ∑∫ỹriȱŋ that you may find useful.
For starters, the ∑∫ỹriȱŋ are able to build sanctuaries through the Forestry upgrade, which is next to their starting upgrade, Forest Magic. While this isn’t immediately useful, if you go for archery and then spiritualism, you can start making forests. If you have forests in an o shape around a sanctuary (which needs to be built on a forest), you will start attracting a lot of Unicorns, which will reward you with 1 star per turn for every Unicorn next to the sanctuary. This star bonus does go away when you enchant the Unicorn, though, so be careful of that.
Understanding this mechanic of the ∑∫ỹriȱŋ, you should start as you normally would to upgrade your cities, even going as far as working on getting knights and a navy started. What you change, however, is instead of making farmland to make giants (which are dragons instead), you focus on forests and sanctuaries to get lots of animals to produce stars for you. The benefit to this is if you feel a city is in danger, you can simply enchant some animals to attack an enemy (they are essentially swordsman that cost 2 stars to enchant). As you keep pushing through enemy territory, start working the resources in one of your well protected cities to create a dragon egg, which will turn into the powerful ranged unit, the Fire Dragon after 6 turns. These Dragons are good at disrupting large crowds of low level troops, since enemy troops next to ones you aim at will also take fire damage.
∑∫ỹriȱŋ also have boosted farmland rates, so if you need that extra bit of firepower from Fire Dragons, remember to upgrade organization so you can see the farmland tiles.
Lastly, you can, through the Water Magic upgrade enchant Whales. These whales are tanky, and can attack any unit in the water or any unit on a city next to water, but cannot go on land (unless it’s a city). It’s best to have a navy before trying to take on enemy cities with these whales. These whales also have the added benefit of being able to attack adjacent units if it defeats an enemy, like the knight. Water units tend to be weaker than land units, so this ability will help reduce other navies to ashes so yours may rise.
Other than those differences in where you pay attention, the general roadmap should be able to help guide you to victory.
Using Aquarion
Simply put, the Aquarion is a tough tribe to start. In essence, you either die early, or you live long enough to become a living menace to all nearby tribes. Why is it so hard to start though?
Well, when you spawn in, 30% of your land is replaced with water, and you have no starting technologies. So, in order to upgrade your capital, you need to upgrade fishing, then take 2 turns gathering fish. If before turn 3 an enemy begins targeting you, you’re in for a rocky game. Usually, this is a death sentence. If by some miracle you don’t get spawn killed, you can make another warrior and start your exploration journey. If you get more villages, great! That’s extra stars you can use to progress faster. If you get nothing, that’s okay too. Just keep amassing stars until you can unlock Tridentions, which are essentially the Aquarion’s equivalent of the standard Knight unit. Why are these guys menaces to society? Well, simply put, they move fast, use a hard hitting ranged trident attack, then move away. With several Tridentions, the Aquarion can easily hold their own against other tribes that have progressed further. Once you have these guys unlocked, you can breath a little easier, and work on getting ports and customs houses next.
When you can produce 7-8 stars per turn, you should be able to handle taking on an enemy tribe, since you can just make more Tridentions. These units are definitely worth their high cost, since they allow you to expand your city network very quickly. It is also advisable, when you have excess stars, to build roads the same way you would if you were using regular knights.
Using Polaris
Polaris have really janky resource spawn rates, which are dictated based on what tribe is nearby. As such, what you will want to do will vary based on what’s around you.
The first step to getting a Polaris run started is to upgrade your city. If you have water tiles surrounding your capital (or ice), with no other resources, you might have to make outposts, which is not ideal since they cost 5 stars each, meaning you will only get to upgrade your capital to level 2 by turn 3! That’s even slower than the Aquarion. This isn’t likely to happen though, as fish or fruits tend to be nearby. Still, spawn luck could ruin you.
You start out with a Mooni unit on your capital (the little yeti dude on sleds), and they can freeze all units within 1 tile of them, but they cannot freeze after moving. Additionally, thanks to their sleds, they can move 2 units on ice. Because of this, you will have to get creative with how you start playing. Either keep the Mooni on the capital until you level it, and freeze any incoming warriors, or move the Mooni next to the capital and create a warrior of your own to defend. This will slow your progression some, but it will add some much needed defense. Keep in mind the latter option is not optimal if you have to start by building outposts.
Once you make it through this awkward early game, you should try to get yourself the Polar Warfare upgrade. This replaces navigation, since you can’t use boats anyways, and with it are your ship and battleship equivalents: the battle sled and the ice fortress. You don’t want to use ice fortresses right away, since they are very star heavy, but battle sleds should be within your price range after upgrading your capital/ potentially taking a city or empty village. They’re more expensive than riders, but they also have more HP, attack, and defense to make up for it. Spamming these guys at cities will allow you to take them fairly easily unless shielded.
Once you feel like you can afford it comfortably, you can start transitioning into making ice fortresses. These are essentially your battleships, and when paired with regular knight units, are able to defeat hoards of enemy armies. Merely weaken with the fortresses, and clean up with a knight or two. This sort of attack is very difficult to defend against in general, and gets harder to defend the more fortresses you have.
To start generating lots of stars, you will want an ice bank. While there can only be 1 per world, you can get many stars from it. For every 20 tiles you freeze, you will get 3 stars per turn (Maxing out at 30 stars per turn after freezing 200 tiles). This incentivises you to freeze oceans for stars, and if you get the Polarism upgrade (found behind whaling), you can move very quickly on the ice (+1 tile boost for all troops!). This means on ice, you can potentially have a Polaris Swordsman with the mobility of a rider.
Through all of this, keep your cities upgraded, and eventually you will be rewarded with a giant’s replacement, the Gaami, which wears a skull. These guys can freeze water and troops after moving, which makes defeating them very difficult without any ranged attacks. If your Gaami is protected by some fortresses to ensure ranged weaponry is inadequate, they are extremely difficult to kill.
Lastly, if you find yourself having a hard time capturing cities, consider making an ice archer or two for sieging. They can freeze an enemy, making them unable to move for the turn they’re frozen for. This can help give you that slight edge you might be feeling you needed to capture that city.
