mystics can cast w/e spell is necessary, but for the most part, its MS. MV and PF have their niche also.

Riots against nonmerchant kd + greed spam is good economy eroding stuff. NS never hurt either to open up more options.
hmm that's interesting. I guess one main decision is the trade off between good attackers and halflings. In the Top 6 KDs there is an average of about 1.2 halflings per KD. I guess that most people came to the conclusion that halflings were not worth it, and it was better to have more avians or dwarves.

I thought of a couple more questions.

You say that the best strategy for war is to Max Gain. Amongst casual warring KDs it seems like an almost unanimous opinion that some form of chaining is best. (either deep chaining or semi-chaining).
One specific issue is population-lock strategies. They are fairly common among casual KDs, so a lot of people feel that the extra land from Max Gains is useless if you cannot fill it up with more peasants.
Another thing that most casual KDs will emphasize is the overpopulation damage that can be caused by chaining.

I would really appreciate it if you could elaborate on the reasons that Max Gains is better for casual KDs. By casual KDs I mean anyone from top 100 NW to top 15 NW.