Question: Overcoming the barrier to understand Dom 3?

[Yskonyn]

Thank again for all the feedback, everyone!
I have decided to focus on Caelum, our winged friends, because a) I have tried playing them in 2 PBEM games and b) I am in the air myself most of the time as well.

So first up is creating a pretender; One guide I read (but that was of the original Dominions IIRC) is that Blood magic provides an interesting complimentary twist to the faction.
Would you guys agree this is still the case in Dom 3?
As a general rule of thumb, are guides from Dom 1 and 2 still fairly valid for Dom 3's factions?