[Tolkien]

Ferrying around Ghoul Guardians? I would use Counts for that, since your pretender is better used for research/searching/forging boosters: ferrying around ghouls is something for the common commanders to do, not a god :P . Also, if you delay major research in the first year, you should come up with enough blood slaves with Second Tiers for a count. Once you get a count up, your blood economy should scale up nicely from that point: much slower as compared to having an awake blood pretender searching, however. You won't overtake Mictlan, but you'll still be in the running: and unlike Mictlan, you aren't sacrificing everything else just to be top dog in blood.

I'll go back to refining my strategy.