I think each sacrifice causes a temple check, and temple checks are only as effective as your starting dominion. Mictlan needs the recruitable sacreds in any case. So I wouldn't start with a Dominion less than 8 (unless I click on the wrong Pretender
). You can get a F9B4D4?1 Dom9 sleeping Smoking Mirror with usable scales, eg:
Magic: Fire 9 Earth 1 Death 4 Blood 4
Dominion 9
Scales: Turmoil 3 Sloth 3 Heat 2 Growth 3 Fortune 3 Drain 2
Dormant
This lets you hire 9 jag warriors and an H2 priest every turn (for the research, H1 will not cut it with drain until you can make skulls), assuming you make your scout a prophet and patrol with your tribal king on turn 1. Jags plus your starting army is enough to take indy 5s.