Best city economy setup?

[occasionalplayer]

On higher difficulties, it may not work - but what could be a good peaceful city strategy?
Halfling sorcery 8 books - sage, specialist, omniscient alchemy? Good for fast research, but little power in the meantime. 

I think omniscient/Cult Leader are really useful to achieve the desired aim. Then pick a race that can build everything. 
High Men or Halflings come to mind. THe good thing about High Men is: speedbuy religious buildings, much cheaper. 
How about: 
High men, Omniscient Cult Leader Alchemy sth else - 2 life, remainder chaos. 
This allows for: 
Heavenly Life - 5-6 power.
Magic Market - 8 power.
14 Power each city, cheap investment. 

High Men Omniscient Life only is not as good - you have more gold but with alchemy there is not so much scarcity. 

Wonder if High Men Life/Nature might be strong - omniscient does not give you power here, but instead increases your growth significantly.

Besides, Life/Chaos enables to to grab some resources (albeit not as efficiently as the speed resource grabbing builds).

[Seravy]

Other than pure Sorcery, Life/Sorcery is another good option.

Altar of Peace and Sanctify are cheap, effective ways to boost research and power production in the early spell tiers when I'm not casting anything anyway (as without fighting there is no need to summon or buff troops other than the occasional treasure hunting heroes/units.

Enlightement is a major boost to reaching Spell of Mastery.

Runemaster for halved Spell of Mastery research cost and increased chance for Time Stop might be worth including.

Chaos/Life can work in a different fashion - volcanoes can get you extra power (you don't need to put them in enemy territory, the poles work) and Runemaster gives you a high chance of some of the best globals in the game so you are set for an endgame war, or Spell of Mastery at the same time.

I would avoid Alchemy - without using a lot of mana in combat, and a need for magic weapons in combat, it's not that useful.

Including Nature can get you some extra land my having access to Earth Lore for finding the unused spots and with Omnicient you can get some extra population as well. Guardian is much less useful as extra population unless you are playing dark elves for +6 power but it's a backup plan if someone does attack you.

Life/Nature has bad diplomacy - not only are you opposing evil wizards but they are exactly the ones that can cause the most pain to your economy in the early game. Later on you can prevent pretty much all the damage they could do however.

[occasionalplayer]

So you seem to believe that my setup (14 power out of the box each city) comes at too high a price?

[ksasaki]

I’ve been experimenting with rainbow klackons.  Having max tax rate and citizens that grow as fast as weeds gets the gold rolling in quickly.

One of each book, one more in life for heavenly light and nature for nature’s eye. I might change to wall of fire for optimal defensive goodness.
Omniscient, guardian, sage master, famous.

You have diminishing returns past the first book, so getting one of each is optimal.  Klackons can build up to wizards guilds and sages guilds so both research and chaos omniscience covered.  They grow so fast at max tax rate that you will be making hundreds per turn in no time and the extra production coupled with the death omniscience makes your cities powerhouses.  My only concern is defending against cockatrices or other status ailment monsters but I guess I can just do some halberdier trades, also famous should get you some decent mercenaries and heroes is the hope.

Probably raze and rebuild cities strategy as well to optimize the guardian impact.

After playing klackons for awhile now I just feel everyone else builds so slow.

BTW I am playing all games on lunatic with monsters gone wild and revolting raiders, so challenge is tuned to the max.

[Seravy]

So you seem to believe that my setup (14 power out of the box each city) comes at too high a price?

No, I wasn't responding to that, I just posted my own ideas. I meant that it gives you a different kind of "peaceful" win at the endgame. Unlike the usual way of winning that has Sorcery, including Chaos wins by casting Armageddon/Doomsday/Meteor before SoM, or through military power if you got those globals instead (doom mastery/chaos surge/crusade/charm of life/holy arms). So it's not a "wait until SoM research is done" without fighting anyone although you can do that if you want to, it's just a waste not using your spells.

Using heavenly light, Omniscient and Cult Leader is a good plan. Heavy Chaos makes it feel more like a traditional late game strategy though where you attack once you have your rares/very rares. As Chaos gives you the economy advantage in the form of Armageddon and Doomsday, you need to fight anyway unless you avoid casting them but then you might have a harder time winning the race to SoM.

[occasionalplayer]

The rainbow Klackses are indeed very strong. However I do not really see the benefit of sage master since there is very little to research. Besides, the units you are getting are pretty mediocre (even stag beetles don‘t really fare that much better in the endgame), so you really need to rely on heroes.