Board Thread:The Last Sovereign Discussion/@comment-29984007-20181106155918/@comment-37800935-20181213021457

Not doing a deal with Esmera really seems like a bad idea. Even with a theoretically perfect start you'll be burning through influence constantly if you want to get the best results from the votes. At the end with the minor issues you won't have no influence left and, to top it off, if doing a no-deal run it makes it outright impossible to the best result on the Eustrin minor issue. Doing a deal with Kerannii at least gives you the potential to get the best Eustrin result.

Of course you don't have to go for the best result in every vote, but overall the Esmera deal seems vastly superior to the alternatives regardless. There hasn't been any hint of a downside to it that I've picked up on at least.