It'll be a much bigger pain to get rolling for upcoming players than it was for those waiting on the chapter. Having ~2,000,000 mana on day one was enough to get through all the mana techs and set up your first 10 buildings. Without that kind of a startup it will take and extra 10-14 days to get rolling.
While I was away last week I was thinking about making a separate thread on "Mana/Seeds and Amuni," so I'm glad to come back to this discussion. Since I'm in the boat of "rolling right in from Elementals," which I found to be very mana-intensive for the last few weeks (mainly the tech costs), I appreciate all these summaries.
Some thoughts:
-it seems like divine seeds aren't as needed in huge chunks at the outset (no 40K seed tech costs, for instance), other than to keep up production of T4.
-since seeds are more plentiful, I think upgrading Grape Farms to Torch Fountains is worth the loss of culture. Getting 11K seeds for a Torch Fountain takes me a little more than half a day.
-I'm holding off building Elemental Streets, which are 11K mana per square. I might add some after I get Golds/Traps up and running, but the 1M+mana needed to unlock the first 5 techs makes upgraded streets (and their 2M+ pricetag) feel like a luxury. EDIT - not quite as much tech mana needed as initially thought, since I need to beeline T5, not beeline Traps/Golds like I initially though.
It seems like a pretty challenging puzzle - I'm excited!