Despite being horridly inefficient with my productions, often leaving artifacts ready to collect for hours at a time or even forgetting to reset them after collecting, I just finished the chapter today with the 'bare minimum' requirements of 3/3/4/5 manifestations and 8 canals. Reclaimed all the space, and gave my city the customary end-of-chapter makeover! Even though there weren't very many quests for the chapter, completion for each of them came pretty naturally and although I didn't skip any myself, I appreciate that it looked like most of the 'troublesome' ones related to battling and training units were able to be skipped.
Good job designing this chapter! Even though it took about as long as Orcs, it didn't FEEL like it because there was far less juggling of different productions in order to continue advancing.
I suppose now I'll fill in the empty space with mana buildings to get my roads replaced more quickly, then plop down the Wishing Wells I got from the Phoenix Cult event.