Marignon with the Diabolic Theme

[Spacepain]

Taking some advice from Zen, I'm going to attack this one nation at a time. To start: Marignon with the Diabolic theme.

How should you approach the early game, middle game, and late game?

What pretenders work well with this theme? What magic skills should the pretender have? How would said pretenders be utilized?

How should a standard army be built? What independents should I look to incorporate into my army? What role will summoned creatures play in armies? Which summonded creatures, if any should I work for?

Which form of castle should be used? What sort of domain should you have? Aprox, what should the domain strength be i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4... and so on?

Should I get a prophet early game, or wait for a stronger hero late game? What should I research magically speaking? How should I develop the magical abilites of mages? Which mages should I develop?

Thats a pretty definitive series of questions, don't feel obligated to answer all the questions, there's quite a few of them. I've sort of organized them into related Groups, armies, pretender, magic, etc. Don't even feel obligated to write about an entire group if you don't want to! If all you feel like saying is tossing in a handy two cents like "Marignon with diabolic theme sucks," thats fine with me, just please add supporting evidence.

Zen -
Hopefully I'm still not being to broad.