[Sombre]

I wouldn't try a bless strategy, because you don't have any sacred units, just two sacred commanders.

Dominion spreads with temples, prophet and god as normal with the nation. They can sacrifice too, but they can't preach (Butchers are priests in a sense, but certainly not preachers). So they're like Marverni or Lanka, only without preaching.

I took an awake rainbow mage in my most recent game with the Ogres and she did a little researching, just to get some construction, but she was basically there to forge some stuff later and most importantly, go find some indy mage sites. As soon as you have them, you can get the research going and if you have magic scale use Butchers to help out. But you're right, Ogres aren't research friendly at all. What they are great at is stomping stuff - if you can get some maneaters, tyrants, ironguts and a mass of bulls together with 3 or 4 slaughtermasters dropping Bullgorger, Toothcracker and Trollguts on them, you can trash almost anything (though high def sacreds may mess you up). I had several tyrants who were thugs with only a little bit of equipment extra - don't use them on their own, just mix them with the troops and tell them to attack closest - they keep morale up and still do some nasty damage when the bulls can't hit things.