[Ironhawk]

There are plenty of non-bless strat nations. Particularly in your game, with such large maps, bless strats are overall weaker anyway. Except that I guess you are playing AI which cant compensate for that at all.

Why dont you try a really strong magic nation and try that out? Play Arco, Caelum, Pythium, or even Tien Chi. All of them have very good magic and not very good sacreds. See how the game plays when you are dependent on your mages for domination.