[Taqwus]

If there are many more opponents (AI or not) and much more space, a bless strategy will likely become less optimal as the game will last long for (a) capital-only sacred units to become a smaller part of your military, and (b) nasty scales like death/misfortune to take effect (while growth and fortune players start accumulating pop and free gems, heroes, et al).

Anything with only slow capital-only sacreds is a particular case of this -- ex. LA Man Rangers are not a particularly great pick in a large map; even though they're stealthy, they're resource-intensive, capital-only, and worst, they're map-move 1, and the Wardens can't bless them unless you make one a prophet. OTOH, your broad selection of well-equipped troops and the fairly wide variety of magic you get (perhaps lessening the need for a rainbow pretender) suggests a scalemonster.

LA Jomon also comes to mind; you have a pretty good selection of skilled, well-equipped troops, and you can go pretty far with a mix of archers, naginatas, cavalry, and some Death summons.

TC... Celestial Soldiers *are* good (I've used them more than I've used the sacred fliers... because I also tend to mass archers whenever possible, and that significantly increases the mortality rate among any fliers), but a scalemonster build seems viable enough if you want to crank out the Imperials.

But there are some nations that seem basically built for bless; so far, I haven't really worked out a good non-bless build for Mictlan. That's a bit of a pity from my perspective as I dislike using ugly scales with living empires for thematic reasons (namely, I -like- prosperity and growth, after I crush the last breath out of all enemies, so I abhor the Order/Misfortune combo and the Death scales).