[HoneyBadger]

Yes, astral could be dropped, but it does have a lot of advantages. I really think that, with clam-spamming, spell diversity, and MR for demonic sacred summons, it's worth the cost.

No, blood-hunting doesn't totally destroy you or anything, you can do it and still have an income, and the sacred troops are nice, so you can do fine with a high scales strategy. I'm just suggesting my own personal strategies, and I'd rather get every last drop of blood-for soul-contracts, if nothing else, since that's a good way to do without national troops, also, and Mictlan certainly has what it takes to contract-spam.

Wreaking scales has another advantage too, in that it becomes more difficult for other nations to invade you, because their provinces-for a while, until they're fully in control-have the same scales you do, which means population could take many years to fully recover.

What I have listed above are ways to get around the fact that I'm totally wreaking my nation's economy in almost every way. You can instead choose to carefully nurture your blood-cattle (aka your population) and by the end of the game have a generous self-perpetuating blood supply.

You would just do things differently than I would, that's all. That's one nice thing about this game, there's always lots of choices and lots of different strategies.