[KissBlade]

Actually K, from the opinions you've posted in this thread, it looks like a majority of games you've played are either against the AI or players that are giving you a free pass. Your claims sound so out of touch with the way a game with vets would run that I would find it time consuming to comment on every misinformation there. You are consistently just ignoring what people say will actually happen in lieu of a made up scenario where you claim will be true just to somehow back your hilariously incorrect statement that D9 is a better bless to take than F9.

Your impression that a bless strat is somehow worse off in a small map versus a big one due to "dogpiling" is ridiculous as any good player using an uber bless are able to fend off 3-4 non blessed nations early game without very specific counters easily while stomping them one nation at a time with strategic use of chokes and general good planning in expansion tactics. Bless nations are favored by several things, namely difficult research and lower gem frequency but more provinces is certainly not one of them! The moment a bless nation destroys a main expansion force of a neighbor, you not only massively set back his expansion rate significantly but you force him to wall up while you slowly take the ring around his capital. Once your siege sets in, it's leave and forget since the income from a capital shouldn't be underestimated on it's own.

People have given points on why W9/F9 or E9/n4-8 are effective. Your own actual point to back your d9 suggestion was the entirely silly "Rush for utterdark = game winning plan" when any nation without innate death/blood access is already at a massive disadvantage at any death gem stockpiling versus a death nation in this strat.

Then you posit this with a paragraph claiming that game winning strategies are "Building badass SCs ... Building a giant stockpile of Blood summons that costs no support and then unleashing them on enemies while you paralyze their troop production with ritual magic and execute armies with Horrors can do that..."

That whole spiel makes it sound as if you're playing against newbies, AI or players stuck in the stone age of research while you're hitting 9's. On top of the fact that your point of Arcane Nexus shows your inexperience since the spell is either banned or good players WILL dogpile you and significantly more so for casting spells like Nexus or Utterdark than playing a bless nation with an out of the gates province rate.