You can design your pretender so that he fills in the weak parts of your nation, or to go for the bless effect, just like suggested above.
Or you can go and boost even further the *strengths* of your nation. This strategy mostly works in single-play or blitz MP games, but can take be quite suprising when your neighbours don't expect it.
For example, lets take EA Pangaea. You get more maenads in high turmoil. You definitively want high luck when having high turmoil. Pans don't cost that much in resources, so sloth is nice. You will spawn maeands like mad, so Growth is needed for more supplies. Magic 1 makes your dryads actually pretty good researchers, and you want to go for the protection spells (Mass Protection being the first immediate goal) to make give your maenads staying power (you'll have *lots* of maenads, you will love Mass Protection).
However, at start you will definitively need a super-combatant to take lands like nobody. Enter the White Bull (or Black Bull, if you want to learn how to use communions via Sabbath Master/Slave), who will love you focusing on Alteration. Baalz have noted one should take E4 to a White Bull, and that is indeed a good point (I wish I had figured that out earlier
), as you can then cast all the nice buffing Earth spells *and* you get a nice +4 to the Protection of the Pretender.
Thus, a White Bull with N4 E4 (so that you can make your Minotaur prophet a super-combatant in own dominion; you'll have two heroes (give the starting army for the minotaur profet, eventually that army will disappear, but you can continue expanding with the prophet alone if you stay in strong own dominion) expanding lands like mad, with the raging trampling bull taking one province each turn and the regenerating trampling raging minotaur taking another; just avoid provinces with lots of cavalry or lizards, also dont send the prophet vs icthyids (as they will net him to death; the bull will just laugh at the puny webs) or opponents with long pointy sticks). Dominion 9 (for Awe to pretender and to spread your dominion so that your two superheroes always fight in own dominion), Turmoil 3, Sloth 3, Luck 3, Heat 0, Growth 1 or 2 (can't remember if you can take E4N4 with Growth 2), Luck 3 and Magic 1. Go for Enchantment 2 (to get personal regeration for your pretender), then go to Alteration until you hit Mass Protection -> Your pretender will get more and better self-buffs along the way, while building up the spell-support for your massed maeanads. Profit.