Well if you are going to go S&A I'd stay away from Bless Effects as a mentality. S&A is very limited in it's use of it's sacreds and your armies will not be primarily comprised of them, neither can they sustain themselves against SC's by a blessing alone.

T1
L3
M1

And I'd pick Productivity over Growth, because no matter how much you don't want to use the standard troops of TC, you will be forced to, in order to keep your elite units free of attrition. Early game I'd suspect you are going to be relying heavily on Flaming Arrows regardless, so you need to be able to get as many bowman as you can.

LoF is my standard for S&A as I don't like the automatic Astral of the Jade Emperor which forces you to invest considerable points into him in order to become Astral King.

TC in it's current form (With Celestial Masters being migets on the Mind Duel survivability food chain) it will be extremely difficult for you to wage any wars if you are near any astrally powerful nations as you have to null the best aspect of your theme (the CM's). Hopefully one of your starting provinces is lizards.

I don't envy you that game. While I love S&A, it is far from competitive. Better break out the Courtesans and send them to anyone near Pythium, Rlyeh, or Arco soften up diplomacy so you don't have to work uphill, both ways