[Maltrease]

The Caelum build that I have had very good success with.

Oracle with Astral 4
Dominion 6 or 7
Cermonial Faith (take advantage of steathly preachers)
Order 3
Productivity 3
Cold 3
Growth 3
Magic 3

Castle - Castle.

Caelium's mages and begining troops are very capable of taking provenences by themselves. Usually from turn 2 on with this build. You get a ton of money (to buy all those cheap mages). And your income continues to improve as the game goes on thanks to growth.

The oracle can be used for Archiac record with the astrals you get from clamming your water gems. Later the oracle can forge sorcery rings so your arch seraphs can get to death 2, nature 2, where they can forge addional path boosters.

The oracle with equipment also has a good chance of catching a couple SC's with a mind hunt and forcing them to counter with higher MR items.

I have tried this build with Sloth 3 (for the extra 240 points). While Sloth would not be a problem in the late game it really slows the early expansion down, plus makes a significant dent in your income.

My current build (untested in MP) is to also take Misfortune 2 (and 1 less dominion I think). And give my oracle Astral 5, Earth 3. This allows the creation of golems, hammers, and crystal coins. It also give easier access to wish in the late game by using a sorc ring, wiz ring, crystal coin, and tome of high power.