Are Dom3 Pretenders more powerful?

[shovah]

I dont expect it but what if you dont recieve bless effects (though you should) until your god is awakened? That would spoil one of the seemingly good strategies for sleeping gods. Instead of a bless how about taking the minimum magics you will need (ie for cheap buffs) and maxing out on scalesoduction, order, growth and magic 3 would make for a very nasty mage and army core, you could crank out mages, troops and castles like theres no tomorrow AND all your mages would be above average researchers.

[Archonsod]

What would be cool is penalties to the bless effects depending on how close your god is to waking.

I suppose maxing the scales would be incredibly useful in the late era, when magic is less influential. You could go for a decent combat pretender instead. Not only would you have the nasty mage and army core, but after a few years you'd get a rather fearsome commander to lead it...