[Cainehill]

Used to play CW a lot, and here's what I posted about it once: my scales (I tried others in about 15 MP games as CW) tend to be Turmoil-3, Sloth-3, Heat/Cold-3, Growth-1, Magic-3. Luck varies but I never take misfortune, because CW's national heroes are too good. I don't go past Growth-1 because the higher growth increases how fast the population dies, without having significant enough an effect on the rise of Carrion critter freespawns - better to take magic or a higher base dominion, imo.

To build up an army capable of expansion without the pretender, I often prophetize the starting centaur commander - this helps spread dominion from the get-go, and also lets him summon 3 Carrion critters each turn. (The alternative is to prophetize a Panic Apostate to reduce upkeep on it, but then you don't raise Carrion because you need the research more.)

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Those scales give you a LOT of points for your pretender, so I tend to take a real combat monster - carrion dragon for example loaded up with magic. In addition to going for combat spells, I also really like to have fire-3 and earth-3 : those gems get alchemized for gold, which helps a lot to afford mages, temples, etc, since your population & tax base dies off pretty quick.

Your research isn't going to be great, so I recommend either focusing on nature right away (Mass Protect + Mother Oak) or Conjuration (spectres & lamias for research). When you finally start going up Construction, don't forget the skull research items.

HTH.