Marignon with the Diabolic Theme

I guess I have to start.

My Customary Scales when taking Diabolic Faith:

1 Turmoil
3 Productivity
1 Heat
3 Luck
1 Magic

Dominion 5

The reason I take those scales is because A.) I prefer Production over Growth since I will still use Xbows and other national units in order to take early provinces to make up for my lower overall gold income. B.) Luck 3 Since you are forced Turmoil and this is the only way to take advantage of it. C.) Magic 1 to help speed research and make the cheap researchers pay for themselves.

You may want to take more Magic or less of other things, but those are just example scales if I didn't know what I really wanted to do.

For my Pretender, I have a few options. With the scales I have taken and Diabolic Faith's units I avoid Blessing Strategies (I rarely use them regardless).

My usual pick is the Lady of Fortune. She starts with 2 Water, 1 Nature, and I can use her inherent ability for good luck to counter alot of my economic weakness. I then push up to Water 3, and Blood 3 and Nature to 2.

Voila. Now I can use one of the most quickly powerful abilities of Blood with Ice Devils. I also can use my Lady to Search out a few sites in Elements that are mesh very well (Nature for Forgable Items, Water for fighting in opposing /cold/ domain and items).

The factor of having not alot of Dominion means I would use my LoF less as a SC than I normally would. Though it's not out of the realm of possibility after Turn 3 or 4 (Equip with 2 Fire Swords or something, with quickness and Regen, she should be able to mow things down).

I would focus on military expansion and leave blood only to scout hunting until you carve yourself out a good chunk of empire, then throw on a few priests to take care of getting up your Blood Income, when you reach around 3 - 4 in Blood Magic. Key levels might be: Alteration 2, Enchantment 2, Construction 4, Blood Magic 5.

Look and keep track of any astral mages you get/find. As you will need them to forge for you as well as for Astral Probing.