[Dragar]

I almost never recruit anything in my capital other than demonbred or warlocks, and the former most of the time. They are the best thing about MA abysia due to their versatility. There is an argument for apprentices purely from a blood hunting perspective, but you can use the demonbreds for so many more reasons, I reckon it's bordering on crazy to recruit an apprentice unless really, really strapped for cash.

In term of death scale, I also tend to growth 1. Not just for old age, but to stop pop decline, especially when blood hunting a lot. MA Abysia isn't a great rapid expander, and the mages are expensive. I really hurt when taking death. If you go death, plan to expand rapidly and extensively.

Surprisingly production is the optional one for me. Yes production rocks early, and it is hard to expand fast without it, but past the early game your infantry don't do that much for you other than act as chaff - they are too slow. Where they remain great is in soaking damage and being fire resistant, and the lower resource humanbreds can do that. It is your mages and blood summons you have to rely on more if you are to do well, which growth supports better than production.

In terms of pretender, cyclops can be ok, but I've tended away. All he does is make your strengths a little stronger, enabling your sacred infantry and mages to fatigue more slowly, he doesn't do anything to address your weaknesses. I've used a rainbow in a few games, for site searching, early research and diversification, which works ok. Fountain of blood is another option that is cheap, affords high dominion (important for abysia), and can quite cheaply get you the paths for soul contracts & bloodstones, which can both be very powerful for you. And he rocks as a blood hunter, enabling high production early while maintaining decent research. An awake cyclops I don't think is giving you enough for the cost.

Vanmpire lords would be sweet, they are just hard to get into, unless you take death on your pretender. There is merit in that, helps your mages a lot, I've not done it in a while but it is certainly viable.