Well, let's look at what we have more closely.
First, "terrible castles for 1400 gold and 6 turns" is a myth fabricated by enemies of the faith. Castles in forests cost 1000 gold and 4 turns and in mountains - 1200\5. It is not terrible for late era. For example, Mictlan has 1200 gold castles everywhere except border mountains which are much rarer than forests.
Second, temples for 800 gold is a pain but Gath have good priests to spread dominion with sacrifices and you don't need a lab to build sages in your castles. Sages are good cost-efficient researchers so we may need many castles and some temples to recruit sacreds and sages but not so many labs. A lab should be built when you need to recruit bloodhunters or special mages.
Third, levites are good troops with "sacred" tag. They are not superb units like jaguar or eagle warriors of Mictlan but they are quite good for 15 gold. Kohen Gadols are good potent thugs so we need a bless that will benefit both in the best way and will also give us access to wide late-game magics. I think that archmage is a very good pretender chassis for Gath.
Something like...
Quote:
Frost Father (Body 250, 10 hits)
Magic: Fire 4 Air 4 Water 4 Earth 4 Nature 4
Dominion 8
Scales: Order 3 Heat 2 Misfortune 2 Magic 1
Imprisoned
|
Or even...
Quote:
Frost Father (Body 250, 10 hits)
Magic: Fire 4 Air 4 Water 4 Nature 4
Dominion 8
Scales: Order 3 Productivity 1 Heat 2 Growth 1 Misfortune 2 Magic 1
Imprisoned
|
You will have no problems expanding early because of your cheap cost-efficient sacreds (and maybe even Serens), later on equipped Kohen Gadols will be great thugs with such bless and your god will grant you a wide spectrum of magic when he awakes. Also, your blood potential is not enormous and you hunters are not cheap but you can build up a very good blood economy and summon blood sc's and get other nasty things including mass-bloodstones which your Kohen Gadols may forge easily.