[Anglachel]

1)Pretender-I choose Fountain of Blood due to the Blood Hunt Bonus and 0 cost-What would you choose and why?

Lord of Night or Smoking Mirror. The reason for Lord of Night is because he is the best assassin in the game and if you commit to using him in the early game as such then you will slowly but 99.99% surely take even the most insanely defended independent provinces. He also has decent stats for fighting and can be used as an Super Combatant if you take the right magic paths with him but this will require a big expenditure of points on top of the 150 initial buy in which means, except for dominion, you would be better off with using a Vampire Queen if all you want is a Super Combatant.

I would use the Smoking Mirror for having a rainbow style mage because the initial cost of buying is 20 less than a Ghost King, has 1 in fire, death and blood off the bat, and the same 20 point cost for extra paths that the Ghost King has. He also can shape shift into a jaguar, which I think is cool.

I wouldn't use the fountain of blood personally because it feels too limited for my play style. Being immobile is just to big a pain for what little you get.

2)Scales: I choose Heat1,Anglachel has a good point with heat2, more points with little penalty-just the type of tip I need! But what of the other scales-please state reasons for choosing your settings.

Actually it was Norfleet that suggested a heat 2 scale. I am all for heat 3 because in my experience (single player) it doesn't pull down on my economy all that much and also temperature tends to not remain rock solid across all provinces you have dominion in but you will have to decide whether it is worth the extra points to dip all the way to heat 3 v/s heat 2. I think it is but most people probably won't agree.

I have already gone over my reasoning for choosing Turmoil 3. It is not an optimal choice in almost every case. In single player games I have yet to find myself crippled by it but I like to play on large maps, which are more forgiving. I only do it to see what will happen and how it interacts with luck 3 as an accelerator to make up for the 30% income loss by lucky events that produce income to offset or even overcome this. So far my findings have been favorable but far from conclusive until I run many, many games using this extreme approach.

I like Growth 3 because it not only helps alleviate blood hunt loss and unrest management loss but works basically like an income accelerator that rewards province expansion and investment in keeping what you grab that is synergistic with castling strategy for protecting blood hunters and temples. The more provinces you have and keep, the more income generated above and beyond the 6% flat rate increase you get initially.

Magic 3 is kind of a no-brainer. If I am relying on magic to raise my armies then I better be getting my research done and done fast. I don't know if this setting is synergistic with Luck 3 on getting favorable results that would help a summoning strategy.

Sloth 3 for my strategy is almost as big a no-brainer. Since mages don't require big production and I can only buy one per castle/temple/lab setup up then I would find it rather impossible to use up production even on the weakest setting (sloth 3) in the worst production province imaginable. No matter what I do I will ALWAYS take sloth 3 for Mictlan given my playing-style preference for them.

I take Luck 3 because if I didn't do that to offset and work with Turmoil 3 then I would end up one sorry S.O.B. I like being experimental but taking Turmoil 3 without Luck 3 is just plain suicidal.

As far as conventional scales settings that are all about being maximally optimal and NOT experimental I would always take Order 3, sloth 3, misfortune 3, heat 2, and either some growth or at the very least NO death setting.

MagicPaths:My choices are something like Blood4 or 5, 2 in Water,Astral,Fire,Nature.
This gives me a broad range of spells in all areas that I get starting gems in

Conventional wisdom would say that you should take around 3-4 in magic paths that your national mages don't cover which for Mictlan would be death, air, and earth. You don't have to do this but it is conventional wisdom because it is optimal use of points. In other words, if you can buy a national mage that can cover a path of magic then why use points to get it on your pretender? However, you decide that you really want to fashion say, fever fetishes, for the fire gem income or something and since this requires a combination of paths (nature AND fire) that your national mages have but not in that combination then you could get both those paths on your Pretender so you can make that magic item. Additionally, if you want to make a Super Combatant pretender then specific magic paths are going to be manditory. Experiment with paths and have fun because tweaking out a pretender and seeing how it does is one of the most fun things you can do in Dominions 2.

Hope this helps some.