Just won a pretty cheesecake easy victory with Pariden by using my sovereign only on Challenging.

I played porcupine as an assassin, and used her collar thing to buff herself with all spheres of magic.

Recruited no champions and destroyed every city I came across, and built up my original city, although that was completely unnecessary. Could have just won without ever razing a city.

Had to combat until about level 25, then just auto resolved everything. Took forever because the bigger nations would just build up cities after I would leave them destroyed.