.com.unity Forums - Favorite Nation and Strategy?

(i dont see one of these on the first page so i'll make one of these threads http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif )

I just finished a game with
Abysia(normal)
2 order,
2 prod,
2 growth(i think)
3 heat
-1 luck and
0 magic/drain

Warlock pretender
5 Blood
2 Earth
2 Fire
2 Death
1 Astral
5 dominion
Fortified city as fortress.

Game rules were
(no mods)
Indie resistance 9
magic sites 50
win by points 50
20 1 points territories
12 2 point territories
2 3 point territories.
Map Desert Eye

My early strategy was to get all adjacent territories and expand as far as i could with just my blessed units, started with the ones who had less units, a anathemant salamander(360 gold one) made prophet and used him as a commander(divine blessing) and recruited 3-4 demonborn(blah dont remember their name) as base researchers(and my pretender added to research also) and kept on pumping out blessed units, conquering any nearby territory that had less than 40 defending units(not heavy cavalry ones tho).
High income territories i used for money and put local defense on, lowpop territories i put warlocks(built labs) on(not pupils) and tax 70% with bloodhunting on, all blood income went into making equipment for the warlocks.(used the fire gem income to make it into money depending on need)

Increased recruiting of demonborn to increase research(mainly construction) and used the pretender to search sites in my territories.

Forged a bloodstone(+1 blood and 1 earth gem/month) and a fire helmet for the main strategy goal later on, Hammer of the Forge Lord.

made a dwarven hammer before it as soon as i could also.(Gems from the bloodstone and one or two sites and converting fire gems).

all blood income went to forging soul contracts which i put on my researchers(which all were equipped with 1 bloodslave each for leech).

kept on forging bloodcontracts, soon as i had 10 fullequipped researchers i started summoning archdevils or dark angels.

npc opponents were everyone except man, pangae, ctis and ermor.(all impossible)

Worked vs npc but i dont think this would work in mp since someone else would probably beat me to making the hammer, but then i could compensate probably increase my bloodhunting, the main problem would be defense/offense since my blessed units has low strategic movement and a lack of income.
Burden of Time would probably kill my strategy unless i could get lucky and fire bombard the mage casting it or find a 5 astral gem site and/or if i kill pythium/arco/rl'yeh(heh yeh right).

What is your favorite Nation/Strategy?

[ February 10, 2004, 21:14: Message edited by: DLC ]