Dominions 5 is a very complex game. Unless you have a solid understanding of the game mechanics, it can be hard to make good choices when designing your nation and its units, and the sheer amount of options available can be downright intimidating to a new player. There are detailed guides out there, that go deep into the mathematics behind the game. That's not what this guide is for. This guide is intended to be a concise overview of some of the more complicated parts of the game, and suggestions of things to consider when customizing your nation.

After you pick your nation, the first thing you'll pick is your pretender's body. There are 4 archetypes, going by base dominion score:


Dominion 1: "Rainbow Mages"
So named for their colorful magic skill icons. These are dirt cheap mortal bodies that are too fragile for combat, but are able to take a wide variety of magic paths. This lets nations that normally only have access to a few schools of magic branch out into other types that they don't normally have access to. They're also a great way to get both good scales and a good bless, especially when taken imprisoned. Don't underestimate the power of stacking up non-incarnate blesses! (Try putting a minimum of 3 points in either fire/water/earth/air or astral/nature/death/blood).


Dominion 2: "Monsters"
These guys are huge mythic beasts with high natural protection and multiple attacks, making them powerful thugs from turn 1 and are almost always taken awake. They exist to help you expand your territory against NPCs in year 1 and help you fight early wars against other players in year 2 or 3. They vary a LOT in effectiveness. Some will be a powerful force on the map, capable of threatening player armies, while weaker ones won't even be able to survive being surrounded by indie light infantry. As a rule of thumb, when operating solo without any self-buffs or equipment, awake expanders will need 15+ protection to expand effectively against weak indies (light/heavy infantry, animal-worshipping tribes, monkeys, woodsmen), but will need 25+ protection (after going berserk perhaps) to threaten early-game player-made armies or to safely conquer large numbers of NPC barbarians and heavy cavalry.
While innately powerful, monsters lack the ability to wear most forms of equipment, so they fall off in effectiveness by the mid game, especially if they don't have Recuperation as they then tend to rack up afflictions. Take an awake monster if you have trouble conquering independents: aim to consistently have at least 15+ provinces by turn 12 in practice games. You can also take a monster god if you just want to be super aggressive and grab as much land as possible and start early wars. For extra aggressiveness, take one with an incarnate bless to try to snowball to victory off a powerful early game. Beware, if you're involved in an early war, pretender gods are much weaker in enemy dominion, and rushing an enemy's capital with one is risky.


Dominion 3: "Titans"
Despite being giants, these guys are usually too weak to help you expand year 1 because most of them start out with unimpressive equipment and low natural protection. Sometimes they can do it, especially if you can quickly forge them some basic gear, but their main advantage comes in the mid/late game, not the early game. They have good magic access in 2 or 3 paths and they have a variety of equipment slots, which means that they make extremely powerful units when kitted out fully, and around construction 4 you can expect them to become more powerful than Dominion 2 monsters. They are usually, but not always, taken dormant, in order to help you in early wars, while in the late game their versatility often allows them to adopt a number of different roles.


Dominion 4: "Immobiles"
These are super cheap bodies with strong magic in 2 or 3 paths, but can't leave their province except through magic (requiring a laboratory). They are also usually quite durable, but can usually only be used in a defensive role. Their main use is to be a stat stick for a good bless or good scales.


Hybrids
There are also a few oddballs like the Demilich, the Virtue and the Ghost King (and many more) who don't quite fit into any of the above categories. These pretenders are more versatile, but also have their own drawbacks as well. The Demilich is a hybrid between a Rainbow Mage and an Immobile, it has good magic access but lacks the durability of other immobiles. The Virtue is a hybrid between an Awake Expander and a Titan, it has a variety of built-in abilities that let it expand turn 1, and it has a full array of equipment slots, but it is much smaller and weaker than a true Titan. The Ghost King is a hybrid between a Rainbow Mage and an Awake Expander, it can branch into other paths and can help with expansion, but is more expensive than a Rainbow and is worse at expansion than a dedicated Awake Expander. So be aware that there are exceptions to the 4 archetypes outlined above.


Making your pretender start the game asleep refunds a massive amount of design points for you to use. For this reason, you should probably delay your god's awakening for as long as you can if there's no substantial benefit to his awakening. That being said, Dominions is a game where there are no anti-snowballing measures, so a nation that is twice as big will have twice as much income, which then fuels further recruitment and expansion. A strong early game will often mean a strong mid game and then a strong late-game, and you want to be in a position where you are consistently stronger than those around you, and growing. If you are too far-sighted and build around a powerful late-game without anything to help you get there, you will probably just end up getting stomped. On the other hand, you do need to make sure that you're not just relying on capital-only sacreds all game and can transition into a mid and late-game strategy that scales with your empire's size.

Awake
Awake means you start the game with your pretender in your fort. There's only ever one reason to do this, and it's that you want to have a more powerful expansion during year 1, when most of the world is unclaimed and up for grabs. Taking your pretender awake should be done if you have a powerful incarnate bless that will significantly boost the power of your sacred troops, or if you have a powerful pretender who can reliably capture provinces with minimal preparation.
There is also the niche case that only applies to a few nations (EG Yomi), which have thug commanders who can conquer independents with some low-level self-buffs (see the section on "Thug Spells"). For these nations, having an awake pretender capable of hitting alteration 2 or 3 or enchantment 2 in a couple of turns may actually do more for your expansion than even a super-combatant.

Dormant
Dormant means your pretender will wake up roughly around turn 12. This means he'll arrive too late to help you with the early game expansion, (which is usually wrapping up by now) but he can help you search for magic sites, research, craft items, or fight against other players, depending on how you designed him. Around the time he awakens, most players will start looking for easy targets to annex. A dormant pretender with either a strong body or a strong incarnate bless can help dissuade other players from seeing you as this target.

Imprisoned
Imprisoned means your pretender will wake up roughly 3 years into the game, which is a long time to wait, so don't take an imprisoned pretender unless you have good national troops that can hold off an invasion by powerful enemy sacreds with a strong bless. Giving your imprisoned pretender an incarnate bless or an expensive body is usually a huge waste, as a significant portion of the game will go by without either of these things benefiting you in any way. However, you can still have a powerful bless, by stacking up cheap minor blesses like strength or defence skill.

This is your nation's economy, so named because you take from one and give to another to balance your nation the way you like. You will want to take design points from parts of the economy unimportant to your strategy, and use these points to make either the other parts of your economy or your god stronger.


Dominion
Dominion spreads out from your god, your prophet and your temples and overwhelms weaker dominions nearby. It applies your scales to provinces you have dominion over; it also provides economic information about the area; provides bonus morale to friendly troops and morale penalties to enemies; and it makes your god much stronger when in friendly dominion, and much weaker in enemy dominion. If you have no provinces left with your dominion, you lose the game, so 4 is considered the bare minimum. You will usually want to set dominion based on the number of sacreds you would like to recruit each turn, as this is limited by dominion. If you want to keep enemy dominion out of your lands then you will also want a higher dominion score. Investing a lot of points into your other scales does you no good if half your lands are in enemy dominion.


Order/Turmoil and Production/Sloth
These two scales mainly tweak your recruitment costs: Recruitment Points for Order and Resource Cost for Productivity. You need these scales to be adjusted based on what your limiting factor is when building an army. For example, if a unit that you expect to form the bulk of your army costs 10 gold 25 resources 10 rec points, then when you are building an army of these, you will probably find yourself running out of resources before you run out of recruitment points, so you can take Productivity to produce them more quickly or Turmoil to free up more design points. If your units are expensive in gold compared to resources or recruitment points, it's safe to take both turmoil and sloth, since gold will be your limiting factor. Test things out and see if you find yourself constantly short on either rec-points or resources, and adjust these scales accordingly until they are evenly balanced (though this will always vary somewhat from fort to fort).


Heat/Cold
These scales affect several different things, but usually in a very minor and often inconsequential way. Each race has an ideal temperature and deviating from this reduces income. However, throughout the year, temperatures fluctuate naturally, making heat/cold, one of the least-impactful economic scales. For this reason, heat/cold is commonly used as a dump stat. At the very least, taking either heat+1 or cold+1 from your preferred climate is strongly recommended as most nations. Whether you go heat or cold, and how far, depends on a number of considerations. The most important one: troop mobility. In summer it takes 6 movement points to cross over plains. Look at your nation's troops (specifically, look at the slowest ones you intend to use in your armies). Do they have map move 12 or more? If so, they can move through 2 friendly plains/farms provinces at a time. This is extremely useful as it allows you to rapidly relocate armies as the strategic situation develops. Do you have less than 12 map move? Then your troops will have to trudge it out one province at a time. In cold-1, lands will become covered in snow and will be slower to move through, which might mean that units that can go 2 provinces at a time in summer can only go 1 province at a time in winter. For this reason, you should go for heat if your troops are MM12 or higher. If they are lower than MM12, cold isn't a bad idea, as it lets them cross rivers, which helps to mitigate the mobility disadvantage of having to move 1 province at a time. Taking cold will block off mountain passes, but in most maps, these usually aren't as much of an obstacle as rivers. Another consideration is fatigue: your units will tire more quickly in extreme temperatures (unless they have resistance to heat or cold). If you rely on troops with high encumbrance, then milder temperature might be better. Do you have fire mages? Fire magic is more effective in heat scales, and less effective in cold scales. As a final note, some nations (eg. Abyssia) have strong affinity for extreme temperature and their units will be much stronger when fighting in temperature they like. When playing as these nations you will want to max out your temperature scales to help your troops. If you have fore-knowledge of fighting against such nations, then you can take the opposite scales, to significantly weaken any attempted invasions by them. Finally, heat and cold are capped at 1 point underwater, so underwater nations will always want to max out their temperature scales.


Growth/Death
Population directly corresponds to income, resources and recruitment points. Also, population will grow exponentially in growth scales. What this means is that growth is the single best economic scale in the game and is almost always put to 3, as any province you hold will increase in value so much over a game that the income provided by growth overshadows the income provided by any other scale. Death is debilitating to your economy and only ever taken by nations that are already forced to kill their own population (EG. Lemuria) or by nations that can control the rate that their dominion spreads (EG Mictlan) because they can just keep enough dominion on the map that they don't die, while using their neighbor's dominion for their economy. In very small games (maybe 4 players or less), death may be viable if the game is quick.


Luck/Misfortune
Luck is the second-best scale in the game after growth for making lots of money over the course of a game, with all things averaged out. Unlike growth, the income comes in random, occasional bursts, so it can be unreliable, but can also potentially be a huge swing in power. One benefit luck does have over growth, however, is that luck will also provide you with magic gems and heroes. Depending on your nation, these heroes can be extremely powerful mages. Depending on what you can do with the gems, these may be more valuable to you than gold. Another benefit of Luck over Growth is that events have a chance to trigger for each province you own, regardless of the province quality. So barren, dead wastelands are still valuable under luck, while virtually useless under growth. This makes Luck a favorite for nations like Lemuria that kill their own population. Misfortune events will cause your nation to be constantly raided by Independent NPC armies, so misfortune is a good dump stat for nations that have good troop mobility or good thugs. If you struggle to respond to persistent attacks across your kingdom, avoid misfortune. Taking drain and misfortune will cause you to lose magic gems randomly.


Magic/Drain
These affect your research speed. Since this is a flat bonus that applies to each mage, if you have cheap, spammable mages (EG 50 gold level 1 mages) then you can rapidly blitz through the tech tree with Magic3. If your mages are all expensive and have high research skill, then drain will have less of an impact. Another consideration is that Magic Resistance is lower in Magic scales, and higher in Drain scales. Nations with banishable troops can benefit from the protection drain gives them. Nations with good astral mages tend to like Magic because astral can do some nasty things to troops with low MR.

A bless is a custom buff spell you design at the beginning of the game. You can use your design points to make it as powerful as you want. However, you can only cast it on sacred units and it can only be cast by holy mages (AKA priests). What you choose as your bless should synergize well with your sacreds, emphasizing their strengths and shoring up their weaknesses. Blesses are most dominating in the early game, when nobody has researched any other buffs.

What are your sacred troops?

Normal human soldiers
Then consider...
Luck (Astral) Due to their small amount of HP, humans tend to die easily to evocations, or getting smacked by a giant, or getting lance-charged by a knight, or just about anything really. Luck will make your units remarkably hard to kill, and will let them take powerful evocations to the face without flinching, exhausting enemy mages and letting them survive much longer in melee with enemy troops.
Barksin (Nature) This can be useful during early expansion and in early wars. Protection (Nature 1) and Wooden Warriors (Nature 2) does the same thing as this bless and is a very easy spell to research and cast, so your bless becomes obsolete by the midgame, but if you can gain a strong advantage during expansion, it might be worth it.
Stygian Flesh (Death) Same as barkskin, but useless vs thugs and many enemy sacreds due to magic weapons. Less reliable but cheaper. Does not stack with Barkskin.
Attack Skill + Shock Resistance + Defense Skill + Strength (3 of each: Fire/Air/Water/Earth) If your sacreds are just regular guys with nothing going for them except a magic candlestick on their character sheet then consider if they're even worth a powerful bless at all. Magic diversity is useful for any nation, and picking up a cheap bless on a rainbow pretender can give your sacreds a little more punch while also giving you a strong mage that serves a useful midgame purpose.

Mounted units with high (16 or more) defence
Quickness (Water) Getting surrounded is the biggest problem that a high-defence unit can face, as being attacked by multiple enemies lowers your defence score. Quickness is the most powerful offensive bless in the game, and as the saying goes, the best defence is a good offence. Quickness lets your sacreds quickly kill enemies before they can get surrounded and harassed. Also, since mounted units are already fast and quickness doubles their speed, this lets you blitz quickly across the map and pull off flanking attacks, and massacre fleeing enemies to the last man.
Awe (Fire) Reduce the amount of attacks made against your unit, which will even further reduce the harassment penalties they get. If you have Awe and 20+ defence, then you will be virtually untouchable by nonelite enemy troops and can kill endless numbers of them, limited only by fatigue.
Defence Skill (Water) Push that defence skill even higher and make your units almost impossible to hit. Mounted units are more resistant to harassment penalties from being surrounded, so that makes this a good pickup.
Blood Surge (Blood) This is a huge benefit to all your combat stats and the only requirement to activate it is that your sacreds need to kill a single enemy, which is quite easy to do if you have a lance that does bonus damage to the first unit it hits.
Swiftness (Air) An off-brand knockoff of quickness. It's not nearly as good, but it is a cheap way to increase your mounted unit's ability to rush down enemy mages and massacre fleeing foes. Perhaps more importantly, it's also a cheap way to stack defence alongside the defence buff from water.
Twist Fate (Astral) Since your units almost never get hit, twist fate will hedge against taking a bad roll. If your troops have glamor, then twist fate will keep glamor active for longer (since glamor ends when your units are hit).

Units with high protection (16 or more)
Hard Skin (Earth) If your units have 5 or more natural protection (IE your sacreds are big tough monsters), give them Hard Skin. This will stack with their natural protection, and can stack further with their armor if they're capable of wearing any. If your pretender is an awake expander, this will also be a huge benefit to them when they're fighting in friendly dominion.
Barkskin (Nature) If your units are squishy humans in strong suits of armor and have less than 5 natural protection, barkskin is a good pick-up, since it sets their natural protection to 10, which stacks with their armor protection and can make your sacreds ridiculously tanky in the early game. Barkskin does not stack with Hard Skin, so pick one or the other. Find some way to shore up the fire vulnerability if you expect to be fighting fire mages or your troops will be roasted alive.
Stygian Flesh (Death) Wannabe barkskin. Cheaper but easily countered by magic weapons (usually found on thugs and sacreds). At least it doesn't make you vulnerable to fire. Does not stack with the above protection blesses.
Fateweaving (Astral) Great for units that are heavily-armored tanks with weak attacks that never seem to be able to kill anything. When enemies attack your tanky units, they will gain Cursed Luck and are much easier to hit and kill, not just for the sacred, but any other friendly units.
Heat/Chill Aura (Fire or Water) Also great for high-defense low-offense tanks. Instead of killing your enemies with superior combat skills, just outlast them and execute them once they've fainted. Especially good versus thugs without the right resistances. Be wary of harming your own troops with this aura if they are not resistant.
Reinvigoration (Earth) Units with heavy armor also tend to have high encumbrance, which means they'll quickly become exhausted in a fight and then are easy pickings. Reinvigoration can help mitigate this, and it's also a great bless for your sacred mages.
Resilience/Strong Vitae/Undying (Nature/Blood/Death) Adds an additional hit-point buffer against chip damage that makes it past your high protection due to lucky rolls from enemies. More useful on humans than on big tough monsters that already have lots of HP.

Expendable troops with low cost (10 gold or less)
Charged Body (Air) Turn your troops into landmines and put them in the way of expensive enemy sacreds or cavalry. Watch as their 50 gold unit with a super expensive bless kills itself on your 10 gold unit with a cheap bless.
Blood Vengeance (Blood) If you want to make a serious commitment to the human landmine strategy, blood vengeance lets you kill anything that damages your troops, particularly, enemy mages. Mix your sacreds in with the rest of your army. When enemy mages drop spells on your troops, they suffer that damage returned to them and die. This bless is expensive and doesn't help with expansion, so don't take it awake. Fighting in magic scales also helps make sure that the blood vengeance isn't resisted.

Giants (units that are size 3 or more and have 30HP or more)
Regeneration (Nature) Regeneration works great on units with high HP, as the regeneration effect increases based on total health.
Fortitude (Earth) Effectively doubles your big bag of HP when in melee. Synergizes great with Regeneration but it is extremely expensive to do both.
Blood Bond (Blood) A much more affordable (and sometimes better) alternative to fortitude. Works great with regeneration as it disperses the damage and then each unit regenerates individually. Works great with berserkers because it makes all your sacreds go berserk at once.
Blood Surge (Blood) Always a nice pickup, especially for giants since they tend to flatten the first person who goes toe to toe with them. The extra attack will help you kill things faster and is good for repel (since giants get a length bonus to their weapons). The other stats are welcome too.
Quickness (Water) Giants have attacks that are very strong, and can kill most enemies in 1 hit, but are so big you can't fit many of them on the front lines, and so you might not be able to kill things as quickly as you would expect. Quickness will let them make more attacks per turn and push more quickly into the enemy lines.
Elemental/Magical Resistances (Fire/Air/Water/Earth/Nature/Astral) These big guys are usually pretty tough in melee but are vulnerable to magical counters (soul slay, for example).

Units with multiple attacks
Quickness (Water) Turn your troops into absolute demons who will race across the battlefield, instantly massacring anything in their path.
Strength (Earth/Blood) If you have extra attacks that are based on unit strength (IE. your sacred is not a mounted unit that is using its mount's body as a weapon) then increasing strength can make your sacreds very frightening as the bonus damage will apply to each attack. Stacking strength multiple times (+4 to +8) is usually much better for dealing damage than elemental weapon enchants, and it doesn't require an incarnate pretender.
Magic Weapons (Astral) Good for fighting units with Etherealness (IE Ghosts) or Invulnerability (IE Stygian Flesh). Counters mistform too.
Lightning Weapons (Air) The best of the elemental weapon enchantments in melee. While probably not as good for general purposes as stacked strength, it ignores armor (which makes it good at dealing with thugs that can stack their protection score well over 30) and has a good chance of stunning the enemy with each hit. A stunned enemy is a sitting duck that can be easily finished off. Units that attack more often trigger this effect more often. This is (potentially) more useful than strength on mounted units, since the mount's attack (EG. Hoof) will benefit from it but won't benefit from strength buffs.
Attack Skill (Fire) Units with multiple attacks tend not to worry that much about high-defence enemies, because they can harass them down, but you still want to make sure as many of your attacks as possible land as hits.
Blood surge (Blood) A great pickup to make your sacreds more deadly. If your sacred is a glass cannon with a strong offence but a weak defence, then maybe pass on this and take Strength or Attack Skill instead, because you may find that they don't live long enough to take full advantage of the stat boost.
Twist Fate/Luck/Air Shield (Astral/Air) Useful for protecting glass cannon-type troops that have good defence skill, but that don't have shields or good armor. Air Shield protects only against archers.

Shapeshifters with multiple forms
Luck (Astral) Luck gives a 3/4 chance to ignore killing blows and triggers independently on the death of EACH form. So you essentially get the luck benefit TWICE on a unit with 2 forms.
Resilience/Strong Vitae (Nature/Blood) The bonus HP applies independently to each form. So it effectively doubles the amount of HP you get from your bless on a shapeshifter with 2 forms.

Archers or units with ranged weapons
Because archers can concentrate fire onto a single area, and don't benefit as much from strength as melee troops, this makes weapon enchantments more attractive.
Withering Weapons (Death) Any human unit hit by your arrows is now on a death timer if they fail magic resistance. They will age rapidly, which causes their combat skills to deteriorate. Eventually they will just drop dead. Even if they retreat, they will continue to age and die before the battle is over.
Death Weapons (Death) Another death sentence for anyone struck. Your arrows will deal additional magic damage that can go through armor. Also, units hit will become diseased and die within the year. (So you can put an end to someone's awake expander or thug using this, provided you can lay enough fire on them to bypass their magic resistance).
Unholy Weapons (Blood) Great for taking out enemy sacreds and awake pretenders by dealing a lot of extra damage. Doesn't help versus regular troops.
Precision (Air) Hit more often. Precision is also quite useful for your mages.
Flaming Weapons (Fire) Deals some extra damage. It's quite useful against enemy archers as they tend to be lightly-armored. Flaming weapons isn't very good against units with more than 12 armor, but is still capable of dealing damage on a good roll.
Magic Weapons (Astral) Situationally good when fighting ghosts, stygian flesh or other units with magical resistances.

Flying units
Death Explosion (Fire) Amusing as heck, turn your flying units into homing missiles and drop them on the enemy back-line to kill their mages. With death explosion, even if they die to the bodyguards, they might take out a nearby mage. Be mindful of clumping together your own mages if they are sacred.
Quickness/Strength/Attack Skill/Magic Weapons (Fire, Earth, Blood, Water, Astral)- Flying units tend to be glass cannons. You want to kill the units posted on the back line on guard commander and chew through to the enemy mages. You'll want to do this before the dopes nearby notice you and surround you. To this effect, you want to be as efficient at murder as possible, and any of these options are a good choice.
Magic Resistance/Elemental Resistance (Astral, Fire, Earth, Water, Air, Nature) Since you're going to be targeting the enemy's mages you can expect your flyers to be the target of a lot of spells flung at them point blank. It's not a terrible idea to make sure they can survive the barrage.

Undead
Quickness (Water) Undead units don't suffer from encumbrance. This removes the biggest downside to quickness (besides the design cost) and makes it an excellent pick.
Magic Resistance (Astral) You will want them to be able to resist banishment spam and lategame spells like undead mastery.
Undying (Death) This is basically 2 hp with no downside for undead, twice the effect of resilience or strong vitae.
Reforming flesh (Death) More for your undead thugs than your sacred troops. Your troops probably benefit more from undying.
Fire/Shock Resist (Fire/Air/Earth) Undead are naturally resistant to cold and poison. Consider making your sacreds immune to the other elements as well. This will help you to survive the large AOE spells that the enemy will be putting down to remove your longdead and other undead chaff.

High Damage Troops (14+ Strength)
Attack Skill (Fire) - You want to make sure that your high damage attack actually hits, and attack skill will make sure it hits consistently. At around 16 attack skill, your attacks will hit standard enemies most of the time (roughly 9 in 10). At around 20 attack skill you will usually (roughly 9 in 10) completely bypass shields on standard enemies. Also at around attack skill 20, you will usually be able to reliably hit high-defence cavalry, elves and defence-tanked thugs.
Blood Surge (Blood) - Blood surge raises attack skill and strength even further, but requires you to make a kill first. Useful versus player armies, but not very useful versus small squads of highly elite giants or thugs.
Strength (Earth/Blood) - Putting even more strength on your troops makes them even more effective against high-protection super-combatants which can have a protection of 30 or higher.
Quickness (Water) - Allows you to make extra attacks with your high-damage unit, but not always worthwhile due to the high design point cost.
Magic Weapons (Astral) - Also ensures that your attacks hit more often for full effect, by allowing you to ignore powerful buffs like Etherealness and Mistform.

Troops with Long Weapons (3+ Length)
Attack Skill (Fire) - Attack skill is good for just about any melee unit that wants to kill things, but when your unit has a long weapon, then attack skill also begins to take on a defensive quality as well, by being able to repel enemy attacks. (In essence, when your weapon is longer than the enemy's weapon, then before they can attack you, they must either pass a defence roll or a morale roll, opposed by your attack roll).
Blood Surge (Blood) Another way of raising your attack skill. Also, longer weapons can sometimes be lacking in the damage department, so getting your strength up can be nice as well.

Underwater Troops
Frost Weapons (Water) This causes your attacks to deal an additional 8 Frost damage, reduced by protection. While most recruited units players will send against you will have 10 or more protection, Frost Weapons is useful for damaging water, air and fire elementals, which all have 0 protection. Water elementals are common in the meta right now for underwater wars, so this may help your sacreds to deal with them.
Frost Resistance (Water) Frost Resistance may help you in underwater wars against the enemy's Water mages (if they are not too busy spamming out water elementals).
Low Light Vision (Nature) Gives your troops +50 Darkvision. Deep ocean provinces count as being under natural darkness, which inflicts -3 to attack/defence/precision, which is a pretty huge penalty, often enough to degrade the combat effectiveness of an elite unit down to the level of common chaff. Darkvision 50 reduces this penalty to -1 attack/defense/precision, which is more bearable. Darkvision 100 negates this penalty entirely, and lets you roleplay as Bane. Quite the bargain for just 1 Nature bless point.
Spirit Sight (Astral+Death) Spirit Sight is functionally the same as Darkvision 100. It also has the ultra-niche use that it also lets you see invisible units... so... it hard-counters Ubar and Na'ba.

Small, weak summoned creatures
Thunder Weapons (Air) Gives them an attack that can penetrate armor and stun enemies.
Fire Weapons (Fire) Gives them an attack that can deal decent damage to enemies with low armor (ideally 12 or less).
Undying (Death) Helps them survive longer by giving them more HP.
Charged Body (Air) Spam out cheap sacreds and let the enemy unleash lightning on themselves. Beware that taking charged body without also taking shock resist will probably make your main recruitable sacreds almost unusable.

Thuggable Commanders
Regeneration (Nature) Probably the single best bless for a thug, as it helps eliminate the minor damage that accumulates over a fight; and it stacks with other types of regeneration.
Reinvigoration (Earth) Also extremely useful for thugs, as it helps them fight for longer without becoming fatigued
Blood Surge (Blood) Helps thugs chop through the endless hordes of enemy province defence. Especially good for a repel-based build
Awe (Fire) Useful for thugs with high defence.
Fire/Shock/Frost/Poison/Magic Resistance (Fire/Air/Water/Earth/Nature/Astral) Often thugs are vulnerable to magical counters, so taking some resistances to magic (depending on what the thug can't self-buff with) can be useful to keep them alive.

Sacred Mages
Note: you can make any non-sacred mage sacred by giving him a Shroud of the Battle Saint, a cheap item that can be forged by any astral 1 mage once you research Construction 4.
Precision (Air) Increases accuracy of spells. Decent for evocation casters. (Air or Fire mages in particular).
Far Caster (Astral) Increases range. Mages that are farther back from the action are usually safer. Mages that are farther forward with this buff might be able to target the enemy mage line with their spells.
Arcane Finesse (Astral) Good for death mages and astral mages as these schools have spells that can usually be resisted. Late game astral strats usually involve boosting magic penetration as high as possible and killing enemy commanders.
Reinvigoration (Earth) Mages will typically fatigue themselves out in battle. With reinvigoration they can cast more spells over the course of a battle.
Magic/Elemental Resistances (Astral/Fire/Water/Earth/Air/Nature) Some spells can target the whole battlefield. Don't let your squishy and expensive mages die to these spells.
Unaging (Nature) Mages (especially your more expensive mages) tend to be old. This means they are slower on the strategic map, fatigue quicker in combat and occasionally get diseased and DIE. Unaging has the unwritten effect that it makes them younger when you hire them, so they're no longer old. Not having to replace your 300 gold cap-only mages every year can actually be quite beneficial. It also makes your sacreds more resilient to the death spells Burden of Time and Decay.
Arcane/Undead Leadership (Astral/Death) some nations (EG. Scelaria, Abyssia) will be able to easily summon more monsters than they can actually lead. This will lead to forts filled with endless monsters while your mages carry only a small fraction of your troops into combat. Use this bless (stacked 2-4 times) to let your low level priests act as commanders and carry more troops into battle.
Regeneration (Nature) Very good for giant mages with blood or astral. This lets them act as communion slaves and your communion masters can drain their life to cast spells while the slaves regenerate the damage. Not recommended for human mages as they will only regenerate 1 or 2 hp a turn, which is too weak to cast spells from HP.

Fire
Morale - Morale is something that, normally you don't notice it, but when it comes into play, you may be frustrated with how difficult it can be to raise, especially on your troops. Morale affects seductions (which happen outside of combat so you won't benefit from this bless unless using a Shroud), resistance to awe, resistance to repel, resistance to randomly running away from a battle you could have won, and resistance to some fear-based strategies like Wailing Winds. Sacred troops usually have naturally high morale anyways, but sacred mages are often total wimps. Too niche to make a strategy around stacking up, but nice to have if you have a spare point in fire after taking Attack Skill or Major Fire Resistance.
Inspirational Presence - Same comments as above, except that this is one of the few blesses that benefit your non-sacred units. However, the effect is so small (just 1 morale for 4 bless points) that it will probably not end up making any difference. This may have some niche use on nations that have bad national commanders or that have troops (slaves, perhaps) which have serious morale issues that hamper their effectiveness.
Fire Shield - Has the niche use of being good for awake expanders, since fire mages add their skill in fire magic to the damage dealt. It basically gives you access to the spell Fire Shield before Enchantment 3 has been researched. Otherwise, has the issue of being countered by long weapons (like spears) or medium armor, both of which are very common on even cheap, basic infantry. This bless can be useful on thugs or sacred troops for defeating tarpit units like longdead or swarm insects, and some of the weaker types of indies/province defence.

Water
Water Breathing - Your troops can survive underwater, but won't necessarily be good at fighting underwater. Underwater nations who get invaded will laugh at your rusty equipment and throw you out of their lake. Rather than spending all of your bless points on being a bad amphibious nation, just pick an amphibious nation to begin with, and get a good bless.

Earth
Unbreakable - Reduces your units' chances of taking afflictions when damaged. If your thugs or sacreds are taking so much damage that they are racking up afflictions, then they are often in danger of just dying outright. It is usually better to prevent them from taking damage with Hard Skin or something similar, than letting them get pummelled and giving them a band-aid.
Reconstruction - The only nation that makes heavy use of sacred statues as a strategy is Middle Age Agartha. As anyone else, avoid this bless as it will be borderline useless.

Astral
Etherealness - Negates 3 in 4 attacks unless the enemy is using magic weapons. Stacks with Luck to potentially negate up to 15 out of 16 attacks. Sadly, you can't take both on a bless, but both Etherealness and Luck can be cast by astral mages (though Luck is far easier to apply to a large number of troops). Not recommended for general use due to its extremely high design point cost, and the fact that it is easily countered by magic weapons. An exception can be made for nations that get a bonus to astral blesses, in which case it may be worth looking at, but it is still a risky strategy that is vulnerable to a hard-counter. Basically, with this bless, you will be hunting down and bullying players who don't have magical weapons on their national troops or on their bless, and trying to grow fat off of them. A nice side-effect of this bless is that having a super high-level astral mage is pretty darn nice when you get to the late-late-game.
Solar Weapons - For fighting undead and demons, negated by high protection or fire resistance. Against undead nations, usually Magic Weapons is the first pick, since it negates invulnerability (EG Stygian Rain) and etherealness (IE ghosts). Demon nations usually have some access to fire resistance, which neuters this bless. Borderline useless versus non-undead/demon troops (even the weakest of indies) as its 3 AP damage will be negated by most forms of light armour.

Death
Fear - Fear is a good ability, particularly on thugs... but not 10 bless points good. It combos with awe, so it has that going for it. Like Etherealness, it's just too ludicrously expensive to ever use for most nations. Consider whether you would rather have sacreds that run around trying to spook low morale basic troops away - or sacreds that blitz through enemy lines massacring everything in sight with quickness or stacked strength/attack skill. Get this on a Demilich pretender if you want to go all-in on a thug build maybe.
Reanimator - Gives your sacreds a chance to turn killed enemies into Soulless. Would be good, except Soulless SUCK. Seriously, they are worse than militia. Not worth the massive point investment, the soulless will just get surrounded and killed the turn they are summoned.
Half Dead - Prevents your units from dying of disease or starving. Would actually be kind of nice to have for some nations that have old-aged mages, but rarely seen due to the death scale requirement. Has the niche use of occasionally being used by popkill nations trying to keep their living (usually indie) mages from being killed by their horrible dominion.

Nature
Swamp Survival - Counters MA Ctiss's poisonous dominion, which diseases units that don't have swamp survival.
Poison Weapons - Not worth taking death scales for, so almost never seen. Also, probably inferior in effect to strength.
Larger - In many cases, actually nerfs your sacreds, by reducing the numbers of units that can share a square. For human-sized units, taking Resilience and Strength of the Earth has a similar effect, without reducing the density of your troop lines. May be useful for size 4 or 5 giants, solo thugs, or tramplers.
Berserker - Hoo boy, speaking of self-nerfing blesses... If you're like me, your first thought looking at this bless is "hey this would be pretty nice on my troops"... Then you realized that your mages are also sacred, and that with this bless, if they take any damage in a battle, they will start foaming at the mouth and try to run into melee armed only with their scholar's robes and ceremonial dagger. Best to avoid unless you know exactly what you are doing because you could wreck your own nation with this.
Recuperation - Another niche-use bless. Like Unbreakable, it doesn't do all that much for your sacred troops, as you would rather make them better in combat so they don't get heavily afflicted to begin with (maybe give them Barkskin or Regeneration). It doesn't help old age mages, who are the ones that actually need to be healed most of the time. What it DOES do, is it helps astral mages who screwed up a mind hunt and ended up Feebleminded; it helps Tartarians, who are typically suffering from afflictions after being summoned (give them a Shroud of the Battle Saint); and it helps super-combatants (such as your pretender potentially) who do tend to rack up afflictions over time if they enter a lot of battles over their life (especially if they get cursed).

Movement
Wind Walker, Winter's Gift, Water Walking, XYZ Survival - I've grouped these together because I have the same comments for each of them. These are blesses that help your movement on the strategic map, but are often not that good because: (1) You will typically benefit more from a bless that helps you in combat (2) Your army only moves as fast as the slowest unit. So with these blesses, your sacred troops may be able to cross rivers or forests, but your non-sacreds still can't and will hold you back. The only niche case I can envision using this, would be maybe if your regular troops are highly mobile, but your mages or sacred troops aren't, so you give them this to let them keep pace.

Increasing any unit's skill in magic will give them certain bonuses. You can use this to your pretender's advantage as well (you will be able to see the effects once you save the design). While all paths of magic confer some bonus (usually the corresponding elemental resistance or some points in leadership), of particular interest to pretenders are: Earth, Death and Nature.


Earth: If a unit has more than 3 Earth magic, it gains +1 protection for each point.

Taking a pretender that can't normally expand very well and giving it high levels of Earth magic can make it viable as an awake expander (we generally want our awake expanders to have more than 15 protection). Taking a pretender that already has 15+ protection and giving it high levels of Earth magic will often let it expand against even the toughest of Independents, like Knights or Barbarians, and possibly even take out an enemy player's expansion party..


Death: 5 points in death gives a unit Fear (or increases by 1 point per level if they already have Fear).

Fear is also useful for making some awake expanders viable. Most awake expanders have multiple attacks, however, some of them do not. This is quite a serious weakness as it means that they will have to kill one enemy at a time, and there is the potential risk of running out of time or fatiguing out. With Fear, the pretender no longer has to kill all of its enemies, it can simply tank their attacks until they fail a morale check and rout. Fear also has great synergy with Awe.


Nature: A living unit's max age increases by 50% per point of nature magic.

Some pretenders (EG. The Crone) are naturally Old Age, which is very bad because they have a chance of catching a deadly disease every winter which will cause them to accumulate afflictions and die. By taking a few points in Nature, the pretender is no longer old.

Thugs are commanders that have been given magical items and who fight in direct combat (as opposed to fighting with spells). They are usually sent in solo or in small gangs to capture undefended enemy provinces or kill enemy thugs (by using teleport or cloud trapeze). Most thugs are designed to be economical to produce, and sent out on dangerous missions behind enemy lines, not expected to return. A variant of the thug, called the Supercombatant, is your ultimate, money-is-no-object superweapon designed to be as powerful as possible and confront enemy armies head on. Most successful thugs have some magic skill that they use to buff themselves before combat.

Building thugs to conquer provinces

The bare minimum essential quality of a thug is that it needs to be durable enough to survive being surrounded by province defence (PD). There are four ways (non-exclusive) to build a thug to do this. If your thug doesn't fit any of these criteria after he's fully buffed, he's probably going to be unreliable at his job and get killed by a random spearman. Use magic items to improve the areas that your commander is already naturally good at. It's better to be really good at one thing than okay at everything.

Defence Skill Tank If your defence skill is significantly higher than enemy attack skill, then they will almost never hit you in melee because you are too nimble. Against weak troops or PD, 20+ defence is usually good enough for a defence tank with a mount and some buffs (eg. Mistform). However, you have to protect your defence skill from dropping, because if a large amount of enemies attack you at once, you will become "harassed" and your defence skill will drop to the point where you start taking hits. Mounted units are more resilient to this, but not immune. To deal with being surrounded, you have to reduce the amount of attacks being made against you either with Awe (Shield of Gleaming Gold) or Vine Shield or some similar effect which prevents enemies from all piling on. Awe isn't very good against high morale elite enemies but does the job vs PD.

Attack Skill Tank If you have a weapon that is longer than the enemy's weapon (Stone Bird or Dancing Trident are good for this) and your attack skill is significantly higher than the enemy's defence skill (close to 25 is ideal), and the enemy has relatively low morale (beware of undead), then you can tank using your attack skill via the repel mechanic (the premise is that you are fending enemies off so they can't get close enough to hit you). Ring of the Warrior (Blood) and Burning Pearl (Fire) are usually staples for repel thugs.

Protection Tank If you have 25+ prot (30+ is ideal), most non-elite human units will be unable to penetrate your thick armor. Be wary of high-damage piercing weapons (like knight lances) or units with unusually high strength (like giants). The most common way to achieve high protection is casting Ironskin.

Regeneration Tank If you have a lot of HP (40+, but the more the better) and your thug is at least somewhat tanky in other ways (EG you have 18+ protection, and some defensive buffs like body ethereal and liquid body) then stacking regeneration or life drain on them will often mean that they can regenerate damage faster than the enemy can deal it.

A note on Fatigue Many thugs die when they get tired due to fighting a large number of enemy troops for too long. One way to deal with this is to make sure that either they have a reinvigoration score close to their encumbrance in the province they're going to be fighting in (you can do this with magic items like boots of the messenger). Another way, is to make sure that they have the ability to kill or rout enemies quickly enough that they win the battle before getting tired (weapons that deal AOE damage like frost brand are good for this; horror helm is good for scaring enemies away). If your fatigue goes over 50, your thug will be in danger. If it goes over 100, they will faint, and probably be killed.

Building thugs to kill other thugs

Every strategy has a counter. Is your enemy...

Defence Tanked Remove your opponent's mobility with spells or items that root them in place (like a Vine Shield or a Vine Whip). This will drop their defence and they can be easily killed. An alternative is to boost your attack skill high enough to match them. Items like Burning Pearl are good for this.

Attack Tanked Counter repel with high defence (try a Main Gauche of Parrying), high morale (Dragon Helmet) or length 5 weapons (like Enchanted Pike).

Protection Tanked Use high-strength units (like giants) or weapons that are Armor piercing (like Greatsword of Sharpness), or attack him with elemental spells or weapons that he doesn't have resistance to (like Lightning Spear).

Regeneration Tanked The easiest way is to surround it and kill it with a gang of lesser thugs. If it's too strong then wear it down with items like Star of Heroes (breaks its armor), Black Bow of Botulf (removes its ability to buff itself), Eyecatcher (blind it and make its combat stats significantly worse), Bane Blade (make it age rapidly), flesh eater (chest wound, permanently adds encumbrance), try to insta-kill it (heartfinder sword), or disease it (axe of hate), etc.

Building thugs to kill entire armies (Supercombatants)

There is no one-size-fits-all formula, but an "ideal" SC will have something along the lines of:

• A Strong Chassis - A Titan pretender, an King of Elementals, a Demon Lord, a Tartarian or any other big, high level summon are ideal. They should have naturally high stats, and have good access to buff magic.
  
• Over 60 HP - Enemy mages will be throwing spells at you and you need to be able to take at least a few hits to the face.
  
• Regeneration - you will take damage, no matter how good your tank is, and you need to make sure you're healing it faster than it's being dealt
  
• Over 30 Protection - ranged attacks bypass defence and repel.
  
• Close to 25 Magic Resistance - you don't want your SC to be insta-killed by spells like soul slay or stolen by spells like hellbind heart. Amulet of Antimagic is a great item.
  
• Elemental Resistance - depending on your enemy's mages, you want to be able to tank through large numbers of elemental spells being rained down on your head
  
• Multiple or Area-wide attacks - you need to be able to kill large numbers of troops fast or you'll get bogged down. Fire Brand and Frost Brand are two example weapons that let you kill multiple targets at once.
  
• Reinvigoration - You need to be able to fight without increasing your fatigue. To do this you need either reinvigoration equal to your encumbrance in the terrain you're fighting in, or you need a buff spell like Soul Vortex that does it for you.
  
• Buff spells - Fire, Earth, and Death are the best paths for a SC to self-buff with; Astral is a liability (because astral mages can be killed by Magic Duel). Phoenix Pyre + Soul Vortex is a deadly combo that will make your SC invincible unless they can be killed multiple times in rapid succession.
  
• Berserk - Not essential for every situation, but if the battle goes on too long, the game will force the attacker to rout. Berserk units ignore this. Flesh Eater is an easy item to get that makes your unit go berserk when wounded.
  
• Magic-Phase movement - (EG. Cloud Trapeze) To drop on top of enemy armies instead of chasing them around. Not necessary but very useful.

The best ones are marked with an asterisk (*)

Holy

• Blessing* - how good it is depends on your bless
  
• Holy Avenger - results in a smite hitting the enemy army randomly when the casting unit is harmed. Usually it will just kill a bunch of chaff, but sometimes you get lucky and snipe an enemy mage with it. More useful on thugs with a lot of HP than on thugs that rely on not getting hit.

Fire

• Protection from Fire - situational
  
• Resist Cold - situational
  
• Fire Shield* - good for clearing large numbers of weak troops
  
• Phoenix Pyre* - makes you invincible as long as you don't run out of fatigue

Water

• Protection from Cold - situational
  
• Resist Fire - situational
  
• Liquid body - a worse temper flesh that water mages are stuck with, reduces speed and strength but reduces chance of afflictions
  
• Ice Shield - only underwater
  
• Quickness - Doubles your killing power but also doubles fatigue per turn, be careful, and judge the situation before casting it
  
• Breath of Winter - good for fatiguing-out enemy thugs

Air

• Protection from Lightning - situational
  
• Mistform* - reduces all damage taken to 1, cancelled by magic weapons
  
• Mirror Image - stops a few hits, good for defence tanks
  
• Cloud trapeze* - for mobility and killing enemy thugs
  
• Flight - useful for jumping on top of enemy commanders during a battle, not as good for solo thugs unless they can act before the enemy chaff swarms them during their self-buffing routine

Earth

• Resist Lightning - situational
  
• Earth Might - increases damage done in melee
  
• Stoneskin - raises protection by a lot, stacks in a limited capacity with ironskin, but makes caster weak to cold
  
• Ironskin* - best protection spell in the game, but makes caster weak to shock
  
• Temper Flesh* - halves damage from physical attacks
  
• Summon Earthpower* - gives +4 reinvigoration
  
• Legions of Steel - combos with bracers of protection, improves your armor's protection

Nature

• Resist Poison - situational
  
• Barkskin - sets protection to 10, or if already at 10, raises protection by a little, while making caster weak to fire
  
• Elemental Fortitude - raises all your resistances
  
• Personal Regeneration* - extremely useful for units with a lot of HP
  
• Enlarge - raises HP and strength

Death

• Skeletal Body - adds piercing resistance, useful against knight lances
  
• Invulnerability - adds a lot of protection, but is hard to cast, and easy to counter. Better than ironskin for fighting PD.
  
• Soul Vortex* - drains endurance from enemies, insanely powerful when paired with phoenix pyre

Astral

• Resist Magic - useful if your enemy is trying to soul slay you
  
• Teleport* - for mobility/counter-thugging
  
• Astral Shield* - stuns enemies that try to attack you
  
• Body Ethereal* - good vs. regular units, worthless vs enemy thugs with magic items; you can have another mage (called a "fluffer") follow your thug around and cast this on him at the beginning of the battle and then run away
  
• Personal Luck - protects against death blows. Good for fighting supercombatants who can kill thugs in 1 hit. Not worth the casting fatigue in most other cases.
  
• Twist Fate - protects against the first hit to deal damage

Blood

• Hell Power - raises your thug's combat stats but horror marks them, so random monsters will occasionally try to assassinate him
  
• Damage Reversal - very strong, but is at the end of the research tree for Blood

Crosspaths

• Mossbody - Nature + Water - A weird spell that is good for high-protection thugs, has a chance of blocking hits, but when hit by a high damage attack, its effect ends in a puff of poison
  
• Strength of Gaia* - Earth + Nature - Gives regeneration, barkskin and strength
  
• Flying Shield* - Earth + Air - Randomly blocks attacks
  
• Stygian Skin - Death + Water - Gives prot against non-magical attacks

Thanks for reading! Keep in mind that none of the suggestions I've made are hard rules, and are more like rules of thumb. Feel free to leave comments if there's anything you'd like to add or if you have any ways you feel this guide can be improved.

On request, I'm putting together a few pretender designs, and walking through the thought process of why I designed them the way I did.


Late Age Ulm, Awake Vampire Queen - A hybrid awake expander

The Body: Late age Ulm has troops that are very costly in resources, and I wanted an awake pretender to quickly capture the territories around my capital to bring in more resources so I can build Black Templars. Instead of taking one of the more powerful awake expanders (which would be a very defensible choice), I opted to take the relatively weak Vampire Queen, purely because she is able to easily cast the Sanguine Heritage spell, which I consider to be very important for Ulm. I have given this pretender 5 death specifically so that it gains Fear (which is given to any unit that has level 5 or higher death magic), which I find actually makes her a decent thug who can expand against most Independents as long as she casts Skeletal Body before combat. While she's expanding, you can also have a scout ferry her some level 0 astral-crafted armor, which will help her take on tougher foes such as cavalry more reliably.

The Bless: Stygian Flesh and Blood Surge are useful to Ulm's already tank-like cavalry, and helps them to cut through indies and other non-elite troops without sustaining losses.

Scales: I took 4 Dominion because our Black Templars are ridiculously expensive on resources and we realistically can't make more than a small number of them each turn anyways. Order is useful for rangers, so I don't want to trash it. Production is useful for all of Ulm's other troops. Cold is a tossup with heat because Zweihanders are Map Move 10 units but you can easily leave them out of your armies and take Heat instead. Growth 3 is a standard pick for most nations. Misfortune 3 as a dump stat because we will have Fortune Tellers (recruitable units that prevent bad events) and vampire counts (who can quickly respond to bad events) all over the place. I took Magic 1 because we can use our cheap Illuminated Ones for research. I would like to have higher magic scales, but having an awake pretender requires sacrifices.

Overall: This design gets us a unit that helps us expand, lets us summon vampires early on, and can raid like a thug or follow armies with little risk of dying permanently. The scales are acceptable, and the bless makes our sacreds practically invulnerable against non-elite human enemies. It helps us in the early game to get set up for LA Ulm's powerful late game, where the nation's native strength will carry itself.


Middle Age Marignon, Dormant Baphomet - A big bless immobile

The Body: Marignon doesn't need a strong chassis for its pretender, because its sacred knights are quite strong, even with just a minor bless, and can expand fine on their own. The Baphomet is a great chassis for a fire/astral bless, which Marignon has a natural bonus to.

The Bless: Marignon has sacreds that can be recruited anywhere. This is arguably their nation's main strength, so I want a powerful bless that can take advantage of this. The star of Marignon are the Knights of the Chalice. My dream for marignon is to blanket the map in cheap raiding squads consisting of a single Paladin and ~5 knights. These squads can quickly capture enemy provinces, and, when necessary, group together into a dangerous battle force to crush harder mid-sized targets.

This strategy works great in the open field, but the knights can't always do everything by themselves, so we also need big armies of cheap chaff supported by mages, that the knights can rally to, that can crack forts and face tough enemy armies head on. Marignon's non-sacred front-line troops are, in my opinion, mediocre and overpriced in resources. Their crossbowmen are excellent units, and we want as many of them as possible, but we can't always have a front-line consisting entirely of knights. Flagellants are often overlooked, because, well, they are pretty weak units. But we don't want to make them powerhouses, just a cheap alternative to Marignon's other front-line units. With a little love, they may be able to perform on a level comparable to trained infantry, but can be spammed out of any province with a temple, and cost next to no resources.

With all these design considerations in mind, it becomes clear that we want either Luck or Etherealness for our bless. Ideally, we will have both of these effects applied to our armies in large battles, by using our astral mages for buffing; but without taking it as a bless, it is harder or outright impossible to apply Etherealness to large armies; while the number of troops you can buff with Luck improves with research. The scalability factor along with Marginon's 45 gold initiates being awesome for research in Magic 3, pushes me strongly towards Etherealness as the bless this nation will be built around. Attack Skill and Blood Surge just help pad out our units to make them trade better, and Fire Resistance is useful for protecting your units from being hit by friendly fire from your mages, and, in the mid-late game, lets you cast Heat From Hell or Firestorm in big battles without worrying about buffing resistance first. Taking strength once or twice instead of blood surge is also viable, especially if we want to put more of an emphasis on our flagellants; and is better for our knights if we expect to be facing giants.

Scales: The Knights have no trouble expanding with just a minor bless, so taking the pretender Dormant allows us to have decent economic scales. I use heat as a dump stat, because I'm going to be making heavy use of fire magic and my units are mostly all going to be immune to heat; and I use misfortune as a dump stat because I will have dozens of small raiding squads running around, and I can easily peel one off to handle Indies, so I am not worried about losing provinces due to bad events. We want to have generally-good scales as Marignon because we need to be able to afford Witch Hunters and Knights, which are pricey.

Overall: This gets us a big, strong bless, which is the central focus of our strategy. Etherealness does have a hard-counter in the form of magic weapons, so you will want to keep a careful eye on who has magic weapons and who doesn't. Economically, I'd say we're rather good, especially in the research department, with a dormant pretender, magic 3 scales, 45 gold mages and access to lightless lanterns. Our pretender can help us blitz through our early game research, and can summon angels in the mid game, and cast powerful astral spells in the late game.

Middle Age Ulm, Dormant Master Alchemist - Magic diversity rainbow mage

The Body: MA Ulm is a nation that has both massive strengths and massive weaknesses. They have very powerful soldiers, strong but cheap evocation mages, cheap item crafting... and that's it. Once these powerful midgame advantages begin to wane, they fall off hard. This is why we need a rainbow mage to open up more options. Normally, I would take a rainbow imprisoned, but I find that Ulm is so lacking in magic diversity, that I typically want to get my rainbow up and running early to begin searching for sites as soon as possible, rather than try to play catch-up later. In the early/mid game, air sites are crucial for forging Owl quills and boosting our research, while death sites let us summon Banes for thugging (which our smiths can equip with cheap equipment). In the late game we can cast Earth Blood Deep Well, summon Iron angels and Queens of Elemental Air, craft Staffs of Elemental Mastery or rings of sorcery, and other useful things that will help Ulm stay competitive as the game stretches on past their power peak.

I am not worried with having a non-combat chassis, because Ulm has Guardians, which are powerful anti-sacred troops; and their other units can hold their own very well in combat. Our mages are top-notch in the early and mid game, so we can reasonably expect to hold off any enemies who attack us, provided we play our strengths right.

The Bless: We take Precision, Reinvigoration and Far Caster on our bless, because Ulm can craft Shroud of the Battle Saint for 1 gem each with a Dwarven Hammer, so we can reasonably expect that most of our mages who enter combat in the mid-game will be sacred. This blessing is a massive benefit to our evocation casters, by improving their range, accuracy, and number of times they can cast spells in battle.

Ulm has a mild vulnerability to poison due to a lack of national nature mages, but with an n2 pretender we can forge thistle maces and hand them off to n1 indie mages (which are extremely common) to cast poison ward. If this seems inadequate, you can bump the pretender up to n4 to incorporate poison resistance into the bless, to ensure your mages are better protected. With Fire and Earth already native to our nation, Fire, Cold and Shock can be protected against with proper research, but you can always adjust the bless as you see fit.

Scales: We take drain as a dump stat because Ulm's mages are immune to drain when researching. We take both order and production, because Ulm is very dependent on its troops. I take a point of cold, because most of our units are Map Move 10, so this freezes rivers to help our mobility.

Overall: This gets us a unit that can site-search to bring in gems from other magic paths, can craft items that the smiths can't (including powerful end-game items), can summon powerful units, and can cast powerful global enchantments. Our economy is strong, our mage bless is strong, and without sacrificing anything, we have shored up Ulm's main vulnerability.