HINNOM EATS EVERYTHING

[Baalz]

Level 2 F, E & S lets you self buff to level 3, level 3 lets you cast all the main line battle spells - falling fire, blade wind, soul slay, etc. Level 2 Air lets you spread some air gems around and lay down thunder strike - a tad expensive, but certainly worthwhile in the right situation. N2 gives you everything from haste to panic to charm (with a booster). I find their battlemages very worthwhile and quite flexible.

For multipathed forge mages, yes this can be a bit of a uphill struggle, though you're site searching the crap out of everything and it's early age so you shouldn't have too much trouble finding tons of indie mages throughout your abnormally large empire. Also, empowering is a real option with your solid income of every type other than water.

[Zenzei]

While not the most awesome thing Hinnom can do, the Horite Shamans can forge shadow brands with a single D-booster, which I think helps a lot when making Thugs/SCs.

[konming]

Baalz, does it make sense to make an imprisoned rainbow pretender? This way, you get a lot of magical diversity (in terms of artifacts forging and some summons) at the price of losing some dominion strength (maybe reduced to 6) and 2 to 3 levels of luck? If temple check is indeed only determined by initial dominion strength, then this would be bad.

[Baalz]

That's not a terrible idea Konming, though I want to reiterate that the blood fountain pretender is not a "throwaway" choice picked solely for the price, he brings a couple nice things to the table.

Higher dominion than you'd otherwise get. Remember, aside from being an awesome dominion you'll want to spread, being heat-3 it's also a strategic weapon against everybody but Abyssia. Helherdlings fare a lot worse with extra encumbrance...

The ease of casting the lords of civilization combined with the fact you're already hitting the blood research hard means it makes sense to push for blood-9 fairly early. You can start deploying these guys earlish late game rather than late end game when seraphs and tartarians are common.

A blood bless has very good synergy with Se'irim who are a fantastically good alternative to what your enemy is probably expecting you to throw at them. The thought of facing these guys buffed with any combination of will of the fates, army of lead, fog warriors, air shield, weapons of sharpness.....the mind boggles.