Hinnom (EA, no mods): Ba'al's or Melqarts

[Executor]

I second Excists suggestion. You only need a few items on Melqart.

As for spell casting enc, adding any items with enc will increase the spell casting enc by double. So if you're planning on using any gear it doesn't matter which one you pick.

Overall Melqart has slightly better stats but they are mostly the same. Though Melqarts items save you a lot of forging early on. With the right magic pick and a few low level items Melqart is already a SC not a thug.

[Excist]

Well, Ba'als are probably the only non-Pretender that can teleport in and mentally dominate an entire army with the right equipment.

Here's a fun recipe I just thought of:
Teleport
1st Ba'al: rune smasher, robe of magi, astral cap, communion master matrix, eye of the void

Cast hellpower, master enslave

3 supporting Ba'als cast power of the spheres (another one with a communion master matrix) & communion slave *2 and all equipped with the cheaper +S equipment.

The master Ba'als should be at S9 after the first round and the slaves at S5 or 6 depending on where they are in the turn order

The 2nd master Ba'al can cast reinvigorate and then both masters spam the single target mind controls to pick up any high quality targets and then the communion can cast returning to pop back to the capital hopefully before any horrors show up.

This should effectively take control of or destroy most any army for a reasonable cost of 30 astral gems and a few slaves.

In vanilla, 30 clams will let you do that every turn.

[Shangrila00]

Baals are Hinnom's only source of nonblood crosspaths. I'm pretty sure Hinnom has the worst access to crosspaths of any nation in the game. Oh, you have thugs with native fear, a gold shield would really make them deadly...oh wait, have to recruit 40 Baals before getting one that can forge that.

[Excist]

Well, with Hinnoms wide magic diversity (all except water) I haven't had too much trouble finding Indy cross path mages (found 3 whispering woods and some other Indy cross path mages in the first year)

They have that caveman guy with fairly useless cross paths. Might be a possible target for empowering since it might open up multiple cross paths.

Other than that they also have their national heroes and lords of civilization which I think bring a few useful cross paths.