That's a difficult question. To answer truthfully I guess we have to look at the when and the how.
this strat clearly takes some time to pull out. It's not as if you could turtle and summon tarts until the point you just launch a terrifying onslaught and crush everyone in 2 turns because you make them surrender before your might.
Even if you carefully saved your blood slaves and jade knives until late game to dompush with a sudden and mighty strength, it would still take some time to :
- fill up your own provinces to fulldom
- domkill you immediate neighbors who then would have had much more time to fill up their own lands with candles ->harder/longer
- press forward if you survived the gang that would be WAY more dangerous than the one you'd have had in middle game
I may be wrong but waiting till late game to start dompushing would be more dangerous since a gang then would be more lethal than one in middle game, simply because in middle game, the threats come mainly from your immediate neighbors while those far away don't bother you much. Not so in late game where distance don't matter so much.
Anyway, if you manage to survive being public enemy n°1 in middle game, and in good shape, it certainly eclipses blood summons in medium-sized map imho.
Otoh, one of the main advantages of blood is often that you can play the underdog with it as you once could with gemgens, since blood slaves don't show on the graphs. This in turn allows you to get to those summons without looking too much of a threat to anyone until then.
Dompush really has a neat advantage in late game IF you first survive to its neat disadvantage in middle game of having everyone on your heels with some of your resources (blood/preachers/sacrificers) used on something else than warfare.
Is it OP? Imho no since it has a disadvantage on par with its advantage
But who am I to know for sure?
