Bogarus Strat

[Illuminated One]

Um sorry, 8 by end of year 1 is pretty bad for MP.
My goal is to have 15 and I'm no way the fastest expander but Bogarus isn't very strong.

Your scale are cool imo - probably others will tell you to take order but Bogarus can get into blood, which works against order, and the random gems can get you into the national summons that you don't have the paths/gems for naturally.
Except two things:
Drain-1 is wasting points, since you get the same research penalty as Drain-2.
Sloth is practically free points since your early troops don't use to much resources and your castle will get a lot from neighbouring provinces once you have taken them.
And I think one thing Bogarus does not need is an awake rainbow. You get good research from your mages, so take an SC god, let him do the conquering and your mages handle the research.
Earth is a good path to take at least level 2.
I toyed around with an awake Forge Lord in SP, Dom9 or 10, F2E4S4 and similar scales and had mixed results. He can forge himself a weapon on turn 1 and your research gets quickly to the point where he can cast body ethereal and stoneskin after which he can kill most indies. Using him before that and against very strong indies is risky but you can give him some troops to help. Later he is a powerful forger and can get you all astral boosters, including artifacts.

If you use the CBM mod using mages to call lesser horrors is a good way to expand.