Sorry I forgot about the big bold print on the first page telling me not to do what I did with the load order.
Rereading that important first post, I noticed the request for a strategy guide. I don't have anything even vaguely solid or cohesive and some of the facts we're dealing with may change, but I'm going to see if we can start up a little dialogue on this.
First off, let's talk pretender. I'm gonna go way out on a limb and say that an earth bless is an absolute must. E9 Cyclops is always a good bet, but you've got some brutal expansion tools so can skip the SC.
I'd say skip the SC because the other thing you'll need is astral, at least S4. One of the glaring weaknesses of Bretonnia is that you desperately need mid-level astral but have basically no access to it. E9S4 gives you all the forge options you're dying for; hammers, crystal coins, earth boots, starshine caps and, once boosted, rings. If we're decided on E9Sx, the stand-out chassis is a Great Enchantress.
As a side note, the Lady of the Lake looks like it both autosummons and domsummons Kydnides which is not something obvious from the description. The odds of you taking the enchantress awake are pretty small, but whether you take her dormant or imprisoned will depend on your ...
Scales. I'm not sure how I feel about several scales for Bretonnia. Order/luck is pretty easily disposed of. You need lots and lots and lots of money, your PD can easily fend off various barbarians and knights and you've got some fortune teller action going. Order 3, misfortune 3. Now the hard stuff! In ascending order of debateability (it's a word because I say so, darn it):
Growth vs death. If you need points, death is sometimes attractive. You don't have any old age mages, but one of your strengths is that you've got pretty kickass chaff and can spawn them with considerable speed. In short, supplies might become a problem. Additionally, you've got God's gift to patrolling so I'd say growth is the way to go. The supply boost is nice, but you need money like you're an American car company and will probably be taxing at around 120-140% for large stretches.
Growth 3, to my mind. You'll get the cash to drop castles everywhere and pay for your stupidly expensive labs so that you can crank out your horrible research mages, bringing us neatly to ....
Magic. Your researchers bite the big one, so there's a natural urge to go magic 1 to offset this. On the other hand, you're going to be cranking out a 10 research Grail Damsel every turn from your capitol starting around late year one no matter how much they cost and you should have enough money to brute force your way through the research malus.
The last thing to consider is that your research goals are pretty spread out. All in all, I'd lean towards magic 1, but this debate is nothing compared to what scales you take for ....
Production. Wait, what? You've got knights. Hell, forget the regular knights. You've got 70 resource Grail Knights to buy! Nevermind the 100 resource Dukes. You've gotta take production 3... don't you? First and foremost, exactly how good are Grail Knights really? Well, they crush anything and everything in melee. With an earth blessing, 2 or 3 of them can smash a whole army of melee. The same can be said about the Dukes and Grail Heroes which you'll be recruit a decent number of from your many forts. Once counters to your Grail Knights start to come out (as early as evo 1), they look less and less appealing. Grail Knights, in my opinion, are too costly, too cap-only and too superfluous when you've got Dukes and Heroes.
What about a regular army? We're assuming that you're pumping out Marquis and Dukes on the regular, the occasional Lord with a sprinkling of Heroes to round things out. The question, really, is how much chaff do you need and how good does it have to be?
The largest problem facing Bretonnia is how to actually kill things. It seems like a non-sequitur to bring this up in a scales conversation, but the other way to phrase it is 'what, exactly, do I want my army to do?' Does Bretonnia rely on its recruitable troops to do the bulk of the killing? Your mages are great at stopping incoming damage, but kinda suck at actually killing things. You've got moderate air access and conjuring up storms isn't something that'll hurt you very much, so you've got a little bit of traditional evocation firepower there. That's the end of traditional firepower for you.
Enchantment gives you some interesting possibilities. Foul vapors + serpent's blessing for one. You can stack weak AoEs (freezing mists has some really interesting possibilities) and drop some regen, your earth blessing and relief will let you keep casting for an extended period, you can put up defenses vs. most any elemental spells the enemy brings and barkskin + protection gives you a pretty solid line. The ever-popular fog warriors is easily within reach. The sheer number of standards around and tons of sermon-capable priests will keep your morale high. To sum it up, your mages are great at being a buff-happy Wall of No best suited to slowly grinding down an opposing force rather than making them disappear in a puff of evocational might.
How does this all relate to production scales? It creates the question 'are your national troops the answer to killing the enemy.' I'm leaning towards no. They're hard to mass, easy to counter (you've got no real way to buff them offensively), and the fewer troops you have of any quality, the less mileage you're going to get out of the battlefield enchantments you're sure to be throwing around. Not looking at mass knights means a neutral production scale or maybe even a point of sloth is option.
Granted, this is all pretty theoretical. If you think the answer is to gather up some knights and lay the above buffs on them, go prod. 3.
Enough about scales! A few other quick things: Unmounted KotR look to me to be overpriced. 2/3rds more gold than an Errant buys you a slightly improved standard which is kinda useful, 2 points of defense which is a little less useful since it's the 17 prot keeping them safe and patrol + castle defense bonuses which are useless. Conversely, mounted Errants seem less attractive. The same 10 gold per unit, now a lesser percent, plus 5 piddly resources buys you the same small stat boosts -and- 3 points of prot.
Grail Heroes make me happy. They're your best bet for initial expansion; individual
unblessed Heroes can take weaker provinces, leapfrogging to avoid knights etc, then quickly team up and circle back in pairs and trios to stomp knights once it's looking like you've grabbed what you can. After initial expansion, they can radiate out to various provinces and patrol. A single Hero on patrol can keep a province pretty comfortably at 120% taxes. If you're feeling a little cash strapped, crank it up to 140% with two Heroes on patrol. Growth, order and 140% taxes? Holy Freaking Income, Batman! Finally, in pairs they're great quick responders if any bad event takes over a province and with 3 flying map move, your once-spread patrollers can instantly converge in large numbers on any attacking force. On top of all that, the smallest gem investment makes them capable of smashing just about any opposing PD, giving you a significant raiding threat. Hero thugs + your large variety of remote attack spells? Mmmm.
Marquis vs Lords. Thugwise, they're pretty comparable. They've got the same bodyguard and the stat difference isn't enormous. The chaff generation on a Marquis is infinitely superior. Basic men at arms are just awful. Paying 50% more per commander can add up, but there's also the opportunity cost since you can only snag one per turn. If you're going prod. 3 and using Marquis and Lords more for thuggery than chaff generation, Lords are the way to go. You will of course want Marquis if you're shorting prod. and using commanders to generate troops. All told, I think it'd be more interesting to see Lords generate 5 upgraded men at arms and Marquis make 3 yeomen. This would stratify the 3 commanders a bit more and add variety.
Finally, I can't envision a circumstance where I'd ever recruit halberdiers. Their attack is too low to actually hit anything with their big stick, so the damage increase is moot. Shieldless with no defense and only average protection, they'll die in droves and the siege bonus is outweighed by the difficulty massing them.
Certain things about Bretonnia are pretty clear, but there's definitely a lot of unanswered questions out there. How do you kill things? Can you use a combination of raids and remote spells to take turf while your forest of forts stalls an advancing enemy? Is there a way to not get completely owned by Pythium?
Tune in next time, when someone with more smarts than me answers all these questions and more!