[Psycho]

I think that when using phoenix pretender for expansion, you want him to explode and kill indies that way, so you shouldn't cast spells with him in order to acquire fatigue slower. But he can only take on weaker provinces.

With EA Ctis I'd take S and E on my pretender, since that's what they lack. You can do for example a dormant mother of rivers (or whatever she's called - the W2 titan pretender) with W9S5E3 and expand using sacreds who are really nice with a W9 bless. Chariots are also nice and you can expand with just them, although a bit slower in the start, not needing an awake pretender or bless, so you can spend the points better.