Great effort on a top 10. I'm interested to know what you consider a mediocre temple and I can assure you there was no rushing in terms of choice. It seemed a good plan to take the temples we want and then use the powers to fight. Realistically its easy to dump a temple if you don't want it anyway. You just transfer it to a new alliance and dissolve the new alliance. Takes 12 hours! We have no plans to dump any.
Easiest location is also an interesting comment - we all dropped centrally and we took 55 - thats not an obviously easy location. It looks good now because we consolidated the ocean. In terms of 'barely fighting' we dont have any pacts but I take your point. I think theres a balance between prep for the endgame, taking temples and fighting - you can tell by our dbp that our balance is changing.
Honestly you guys do you with the temples, it's just my opinion that a few aren't amazing. It's not like you guys picked up the wedding boosts or anything though lol. The one's i would classify as medicore for you are -
10% increase to res production x2
2nd portal
2nd 6% reduction in naval recruitment times
4% offensive increase to myths
It's not that some of those aren't useful ^ it's just when you compare them to what was available, they seem a bit meh.
And for my easiest location comment, i can't remember the first few days i admit, but after a week or so 55 was very much uncontested, and you could freely expand outwards from there without anyone to stop you. Compare this to Triad or MC and it definately looks like an easy location. But if you guys worked hard and fast to make it that way at the start, good job to you.
The barely fighting thing is a bit of a meme with DV, as fighting big alliances won't be worthwhile for you guys anyway. The early-game brown handovers gave you guys this reputation though and i doubt you'll be able to shake it, this along with being 4th/5th in defence for a long long time.