I'm playing another game, with Turmoil 3, Sloth 3, Luck 3, Magic 3 (quite the opposite of the Drain 3) and Growth 3, along with healthy blood and fire magic for my Blood Fountain pretender. It is working a lot better. For weaker troops, you can send in a buffer army of slaves and weak cross-breeds to take damage while your incredibly cheap slingmen rip apart the infantry. For tougher enemies, the summons work very well. Luck 3 also almost assures you of sometime getting their undead hero, which lets you summon a free army of undead. The growth assures your blood economy of being good in your capital, which is vital when your pretender can't move. Magic 3 gets me a veritable army of extremely cheap (and sacred) researchers at 80 a pop in the low level priests that also can command a decent amount of troops.
My complaints against Burden of Time weren't that valid. I'd completely forgotten about the astral priests Mictlan has.
My complaint should have read like "players who kinda suck like me do poorly against Burden of Time."