[Archonsod]

Depends on the pretender, nation and the strategy to be honest. It's possible with many nations to design a good scale/bless strategy to not actually need your pretender.

I guess it depends on how you spend those extra points. There's certain advantages other players will gain from having an awake pretender which you can't do anything about, but with a good design you should have advantages from those extra points that they don't.