Re: Using your pretender early: How?
 

Hi OgreMkV,

Just for your information, the kind of Pretender design you described is the so called Rainbow Pretender in the D3 glossary. As you said, this design is very useful for revealing magical sites and for early researching.

If you like to have a huge boost in research early on, I think that the best option is the Great Sage. I did a quick test comparing the Great Enchantress and the Great Sage researching capabilities under the same conditions (F4/S2/E2/N4/D4), and while the Enchantress had 18 RP the Sage got a whooping 26 RP!!
On the other hand, the Enchantress gives a +1 Astral pearl bonus, so you start with an astral site revealed for free. In the long run this is much better because astral magic has very powerful high end spells like Wish, Master Enslave, Mind Hunt, Soul Slay, etc.
So the Enchantress is a better overall option than the Sage, IMO.

I'm also quite new to the game and I dunno if any more experienced player has a word of advice on Rainbow Pretender design...

Re: Using your pretender early: How?
 

Some nations can use a Water9 dragon for bless. If it's also awake, it can often take a province each turn in the early game - a usefull boost. But you *need* to be able to tell which independends it can handle... and sooner or later it'll die or get horribly afflicted.

Re: Using your pretender early: How?
 

A w9 dragon is nice but an e9 cyclops is alot more fun imo(due to slots). Also works very well with dom9-10.