[jutetrea]

Personally I have more luck in SP with a strong rainbow, as many 4's as possible without killing scales. Then use the SC to bridge any gaps via summoning, construction - allowing access to pretty much all summons and items. Sitesearch early to build up gems, research heavily, start summoning path jumpers, i.e. naiads, hades, trolls, etc and have them continue the summoning/construction.

Depending on your chassis they can then continue researching/summons/construct or jump in with you're main army for either melee or spell help. As said earlier, careful on the low HPs.

edit: for example, my most recent game was with marignon - generally limited to fire, astral and weak E/A. Now I've got access to pretty much everything via naiads, revenants, lamia queens, spectres, hades, trolls, etc.