It is extremely important, but so is getting our ability to organize our shit back after the mauling we took from Steward--and it's even worse if opening Diplomacy comes with another tax as well. If we somehow end up where we can't actually afford to upgrade our Steward Hall, we're fucked.
Our AP going down hurts, and the concern that we'd lose out on more of it by spinning off another Sign isn't unreasonable. But I don't think it is likely to be mechanically possible to reduce our Steward AP beyond the point where we can restore it; that feels like paranoia about bad GMing more than a realistic concern. It would simply be bad game design to give us options that upgrade ourselves into becoming
worse.
+5 Steward AP/turn and the ability to respond to the most urgent and immediate of our current diplomatic situations.
Exactly what diplomatic situations are we in that are so urgent and immediate that they demand sacrificing all of next turn's diplomacy, effectively delaying our ability to address anything except themselves until at least Turn 7? I don't see anything. Wouldn't it be better to hit a larger number of things turn 6?
As for the +5 Steward AP, with Steward AP no longer needed for military management (as that's now Warrior) and no longer needed for diplomatic management (as that moves to Herald) what do we urgently need +5 Steward AP for? More efficient raiding of the relic vaults for high technology that we don't have the Seeker AP to effectively reverse-engineer anyway? The whole Steward category is next to empty.
Also, if all the Sign of the Herald stuff requires Steward AP, opening it up a turn earlier doesn't do any good 'cause we won't be able to take any of the actions it opens next turn anyway.
Sign of the Herald stuff should require... Herald AP. The Signs are our AP types, definitionally, unless you mean that you think Herald is going to have a lot of cross-Sign actions? But that seems unlikely.
the 5 steward AP is fantastic, and it also unlocks hero actions... Of which we have 8... Who are currently swamped doing administration rather than actual stuff they're good at.
We have 5 diplomatic engagements that we know about...2 ap should handle two of them, which are relatively time sensitive. Narcretinei and Stel-Uit. The rest (the two adaptationists and Lalc-Tann) can wait.
Look at the list of Steward options and tell me what 5 extra AP there is actually going to do for us. Steward AP is basically gacha rolls at this point- either gambling that the new actions generated are better than the existing ones, or gambling that we get cool stuff out of the relic vaults. And that's fine, if you like that sort of game.
"Sign of the Hero is going to be awesome, better than Sign of the Herald" is a stance I don't agree with but at least can buy other people keeping to.
Nacretinei isn't a diplomatic action, or shouldn't be; we already got the diplomatic kickoff for that quest at the moot: "They're gone and we don't know where they are!" What is a diplomatic action going to do for us, spend the next five years re-confirming that their friends still don't know where they are? To pursue that questline we need to immediately use Seer AP to locate them and Warrior actions to dispatch actual fleets and warhosts to find them. If we don't do both this turn then the odds of successfully retrieving them with at least a few left alive plummet.
Because we are in Warhammer heroes are so so much potentially more important than delay of one turn with proper diplomatic channels.
My guy, another thing is that proper stewardship build will also unlock more stewardship options. And food is not an issue for the next few decades/turns
See previous comments on this one, I guess. You're right that new Steward options are likely to emerge but whether they'll be important enough to justify the investment relative to the importance of diplomacy is a major gamble. And if not... well, then we just have a pile of extra AP to spend on the farming that you're observing is unneeded.
