[Arralen]

This is rediculous.

If you do that for only 1 nation, you can only play 1:1 SP games.

If you do that for every nation, they end up pretty much all the same. And it kills the game, as e.g. F9W9 is seriously unbalanced, but at least normally has to be payed for when creating the pretender. Btw., it would be quite a lot of work ... .

Ok, here some more details:

new pretender, the Oracle of the Ancients. is similar to the oracle,
You know that the AI actually DOES use it's pretender as thug and for site searching. Why take that away by giving all AI players a immobile pretender?

except it has f9w9s9 magic,
Even F9W9 is seriously unbalanced. Adding S9 doesn't make that any better. Only makes sure that any non-blessable troops the AI might get from somewhere become really a waste of gold.
Btw., you forgot to add e4+ to get some reinvigoration...

and autospawns plenty of Ozelot (from the bind jaguar fiend spell),
You know that the Ai DOES use summoning spells if it has the gems?

a Juggernaut each turn to help dominion,
I'm pretty sure this is one of those units the AI does not know how to use. Running around blindly it may help nevertheless - but is the player allowed to hunt them down specifically?

and occasionally a new unit with stats identical to an equipped bane lord.
This seems the only good idea to me so far: Adding units with SC stats which are auto-summoned in low numbers randomly.
Problem: is the player allowed to take them over?

Suggestion: awake
Why? It can't go anywhere, it can't help take indies, it can't search for sites unless the spells are researched. (I'm not even sure the AI uses spells, but I think so)
Concerning dominion spreading, see below ..

dom10
Why? It can't make use of the awe it gets on the pretender anyway?
And between (lets say) 8 and 10 isn't that much of a difference dominion-wise. And the AI loves to build temples anyway, if you're looking for maximum dom strength.
What? Mictlan? Yes, I know.
You want the pretender for early dominion spreading?
Point is - the AI DOES use blood sacrifice.
And the pretender is not going to spread much dominion anyway, sitting in it's starting province forever.
Those times when Mictlan AI gets dominion-killed early is when it gets it prophet killed against indies, the temple destroyed by event or something - and has low dominion to start with.
If you want to help Mictlan to spread dominion early on (and get some more summons), simply mod the national site to supply MUCH more blood slaves per turn. That will not alter the overall "appearance" of the nation, but will help with AI with its supposedly inefficient blood hunting/sacrificing.

scales Order-3 Sloth-3 Heat-1 Growth-2 Luck-3 Magic-1
With the pretender set to "0" cost, you should be able to get better scales than this.



All in all: if you want to make the game more interesting, you should try to make more subtle changes, instead of turning it into something very similar to the common "strategy" games, where the player is constantly drowned in oversized and super-strong AI forces to give some kind of "challenge".

I think it is possible.