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To that end I would say that a good AI pretender might be:
F9 Phoenix
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For the AI, I don't think you can do a lot better than a simple dom9 no-magic wyrm.
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I play a lot of SP in dom2 and now dom3, and I probably would not pick those options. Any blessing effect tends to be worthless, because the AI doesn't always recruit blessing units and (even worse), doesn't bless its troops reliably. The points are better spent on scales. One thing that is nice about the pheonix is immortality lets it get rid of afflictions when the AI kills it off. That is why I don't like the wyrm as much -- no recuperation. Its too anti-climatic to view a battle against a pretender and see that its heavily afflicted.
I tend to go with immobile pretenders with great scales and high dominion. The sphinx is good because the AI cant teleport it stupidly. Another favorite is the FoB since blood doesn't have any teleport spells. I also hope that immobile pretenders will research (vs patrolling, etc.), which the AI tends to lag behind at anyways.
Just for variety sometimes I'll pick a immortal or recuperating pretender (white and black bulls, for example), but I give them little or no extra magic.
Of course you still get stupid empowerments, etc. Picking a pretender for the AI is mostly about getting the best scales.
Does making your own AI make for a more challenging SP experience than increasing the difficulty? I think yes, because you can tailor the scales better to the nation (even a big bonus won't help much if the random pretender for EA Yomi has scales order -3 prod 3 death 3 magic 3).