Faerun - started

[Jurri]

The Panther said:
On turn 13, I had a lot more provinces (maybe 21 or so) than anyone else but eventually died because Abysia had a built-in 30% blood bonus site, which terribly unbalanced the game.

'Ey Pantha, it wasn't like that! I didn't use the blood30 site almost at all before you were down (a couple HfHs at most); What I did was build soul contracts (yes, at base 160 slaves each) with my blood-cyclops and construction-site and use the resulting devil army to pound you. The bloodsite entered the equation in force a bit later. Also mostly you fell due to diplomacy, I'm afraid to say.

Other than that, I'm with Panther in that you can certainly start taking indies with a suitable pretender from turn 2 onwards on indies 9 - turn 1, even, in certain cases. Also, assassins are a very potent means of expansion for the nations that have them, especially on high indie settings.