Finding a reliable and trustworthy Celestial Circle Sorcerer is only marginally easier than finding a reliable and trustworthy Solar. Additionally, the utility of many spells, like Invulnerable Skin of Bronze, is completely personal. Other spells, like Infallible Messenger, offer enormous personal benefits when they are your control spell. Don't you want to send a message to Lealope and even see her?
Well, Lealope is warded against Infallible Messenger, but it certainly would work against less hardened targets, even an enemy officer in his siege tent, for example! Combine that with Unsurpassed Hearing, and you've got the Sorcerous equivalent of a spy satellite!
Mists of Eventide is also hilariously good, I'm thinking of nerfing it so that zombies under your control can't spend Willpower / essence unless their "players" decide to, because otherwise it's just retarded overpowered.
I think I'd be more willing to go with Sorcery if we aren't starting the war, and Strategist if we are. Sorcery really seems like a more long-term investment that radically alters the trajectory of Ulyssian's development. It's certainly incredibly useful for the utility powers, mind, and if operating by ourselves even more valuable. But if we've got to fight a war then being the unholy hybrid of Lu Bu and Zhuge Liang is really kind of important.
Well, you wouldn't be Lu Bu quite yet, nor would you be as horrifically capable as Kongming against his foes, but you would be an exceptionally well-rounded combatant, with Solar-tier power in direct combat, infiltration, assassination, investigation and strategy.
OK, so this Seventeen Cycle thing has come up a couple times, what does it actually do?
Also, I have found Cavalier's arguments to be cogent and his write-in and general reasoning has convinced me to change my vote from Guile's. I'm still a bit leery of the whole Heartlessness thing, I really do want to not go down that road if at all possible, but at this point war is coming. Barring extreme measures on the part of numerous actors there's going to be a war, likely a civil one mixed with a world one given the generally fractious nature of Creation. At this point Zao is in a relative position of Power and Rihaku has said that this if we the players are going to foment a civil war we're not going to get a better position for doing so without some Serious prep work.
[x] I meant to do that (via Cavalier)
As far as Sorcerer vs Strategos I just don't know. Both would be Extremely interesting and I hope to somehow magically get both once Ulyssian hits E5 even though that eventuality is about as likely as Her Redness reappearing from Hell in a blaze of doom-fire and bowing before Zao as her legitimate successor with no strings attached. While both have personal and general enhancements Sorcerer seems to be the Personal Power focused option and Strategos the strategic one. I think I'll wait and see before I vote as has been my wont of late.
And since I'm going full Cavalier what the hell.
[x] Counter-Infiltration
You study a bunch and then make a prediction which the world conspires to make true. In the book the example given was reviewing two millenia of weather records and then saying, "Mnemon's forces will not attack until Spring." If they do storms strike, elementals attack, their supply chain gets interrupted, and they get penalties on their War rolls. Though if their opponents attack before Spring the same happens to them, so you've got to be smart about it.
Well, it's not quite as all-purpose as that; Prophet of Seventeen Cycles interfaces with the project system, a mechanical artifact that describes the actions of large organizations. What it essentially does is allow you to create incentives and penalties from thin air; of course, you will stack advantages for yourself and your allies, and stack penalties on your enemies. Because it can be used every day, over time it can be even more powerful than God-King's Shrike; a realm ruled or advised by such a Solar will almost invariably prosper, under even the harshest conditions, as the Solar's strategic prescience manifests as a seemingly endless stream of serendipitous acts.
You can use it to benefit yourself on a personal scale to some degree, though, when interacting with large organizations; you just have to do it a bit creatively. For example, if you're trying to infiltrate Mnemon's forces, you might create a Prophecy that "Mnemon's army will be especially vulnerable to infiltration on the night of the 17th, due to the alignment of the stars and the oncoming full lunar eclipse." You do also need an authoritative / definitive source about the thing you're studying to make a prediction, and it must be at least tangentially associated to the thing you want to affect - the canonical example of altering war plans by studying the weapon in a region is a good benchmark.
@Rihaku
Can we design Evocations for Ambition, or is it solely for GM's use?
You may propose Evocations, though a high degree of familiarity with the system and the power level of Artifact 5 / N/A Evocations will likely be necessary to get anything passed. They're powerful, but not highly overpowered.