Bless nation recommendation, please

[Jarkko]

LA Pan has nice bless strategy for SP in E9N4. Early on a dryad (or indy priest) with with 4 dryad hoplites will take any indy province (pool up two or three such forces to take out knights though, if the knights get lucky with their morale check they might destroy the dryad hoplites on the charge), later on (when you have more income) Black Centaurs will see you through the whole game (and they have the mobility to be brought to frontlines fast); Black Centaurs need a critical mass to be hugelsy succesfull, but once you have a couple dozen on the field, most AI nations will crumble against them (and if you have time to drag some dryad hoplites to the field, so much better, as they are absolutely great heavy infantry to hold the center).

Doesn't work in MP though, as such at least (at the very least needs some serious magical back-up, preferably with some Sleeper and Bane thugs to get you through mid-game until you get the tartarians rolling out). Relying only on capital-only sacreds is not going to see you do that well in a MP, but doesn't make it less fun to see a few ladies absolutely destroy any opposition in the early turns

[LDiCesare]

To use a bless nation, you need sacreds that you can mass, so capital-only sacreds are usually a bad idea.
Which is why, contrary to what my opening sentence may lead you to believe, I suggest trying EA T'ien Chi with a W9 or W9/S9 bless (minor earth and nature blesses can be useful too).
T'ien Chi has recruitable sacreds, warriors of the 5 elements, who are capital only, look like crap at first glance and always dealt tremendous damage to everything that was thrown at me in all games I played (except Ashdod but then...).
Once you have built enough forts that your capital only sacreds look like they're no longer massable enough, you start summoning your national sacreds: Demons of heavenly rivers, fires, and celestial warriors. Sped up celestial warriors and, even better, fast berserking demons of heavenly rivers that you can summon in every fort (since one out of 5 of your base mages can recruit them) make up for the capital-onliness of your human warriors.