[Baalz]

Here’s an alternative strategy, lean & mean. I don’t have the exact numbers in front of me, so it’s a rough sketch.

Take turmoil, sloth, growth, luck, magic (magic at least should be 3). An imprisoned pretender with one 9th level bless and one 4th level (your choice) and a dominion of at least 8 (higher is better). First turn get a cheap priest and make the tribal king your prophet, recruit maximum number of your favorite sacred troops (I like Jaguar Warriors). Second turn, prophet recruits slaves, priest begins blood sacrificing, get another set of sacred troops and about 10 cheapo warriors (note: do NOT buy more soldiers just because you haven’t spent all your resources, you’re saving every gold piece at this point). 16-20 sacreds should be plenty to start conquering indys with a screen of disposable warriors to catch arrows.

Continue this pattern, every turn recruiting as many sacred warriors as you can, with just enough non-sacreds to catch arrows. You should have an indy-conquering force every other turn, be expending very little gold (you’re recruiting an average of about 12 cheap units every turn, and almost all your troops are sacred so your upkeep is low). You should have enough for a second castle very quickly, put it up as soon as possible, then repeat sol you have a third castle, which should also happen very quickly (particularly if you’re lucky in your random events. At this point your research has been going kinda slowly because you’re only recruiting a researcher every other turn (the other turns your recruiting priest kings to lead your armies), but now you’re cranking out around 30 jaguar warriors a turn, and 2-3 researchers who are so cheap they’re practically free (but are giving 5 research points apiece because of your magic scale). Now your options start opening up, you’ve got a fairly tough offensive ability if any of your neighbors are looking shaky this early in the game, but all you really need to do is maintain a holding pattern as you leverage your low upkeep (your army is relatively small and sacred and your researchers as well) to plop down several more castles as you research straight towards construction-4. Put the castles on provinces with at least 5000 population.

If you manage to get the national hero with death (not unlikely with a heavy luck scale) forge some skull mentors, and if any of your neighbors has a weak dominion creating a few jade daggers will ruin their day, but the real prize here is the sanguine dowsing rod. Immediately upon hitting construction-4 forge as many of them as you have blood slaves for. In each of your non-capitol castles set up 3 of your cheap priests with sanguine rods to blood hunt, and put the tax rate to 0. At this point your income is going to drop a bit, but again you’ve got a nice, low-upkeep army. Keep recruiting cheapo priests every turn, as many as you can get, and switch all research to blood. You should have sufficient cheapo priests at this point (plus the capacity to recruit them every turn) that the research goes a lot faster, so your sacred national troops should be enough to defend your borders long enough for you to get to blood 4, 5 & 6, which you’ll hit with several hundred blood slaves in the bank. Make sure you have a couple dudes doing bowl of blood, as some of the blood sites really cut your casting cost by a lot.

At this point you’ve got too many options to list, but that’s when it gets fun.