LA Pythium

[Agema]

Jazzepi's right. Scales take a while to fade away. And drain is a disaster for nations that can't build high-research mages outside the capital, as is the case for LA Pythium.

My suggestion is an S/E pretender with at least +2 Productivity, otherwise you'll barely be able to recruit troops except the chaff. Order would be good too. I'm thinking your critical items are Ring of Wizardry, Dwarven Hammer, and crystal doo-dahs (Coins for +1S, Matrices) to help along communions.

Pythium has every type of magic, even blood, and S mages are easy for N, W, A; rarer for D. So that's 5 magic types viable for communion immediately. Nature and Death can be advanced to mid-level easily enough. Everything else is tricky, so I'd think Ring of Wizardry is an absolute must, as then W, E and S can be raised easily (although you'll already have E and S from the pretender.) So all you'll be missing is Fire, Air and Blood from easy increases. I'd be tempted to ignore blood entirely though.

The other thing to do is site search like crazy for massive gem income - you can search for anything to at least level 1.