Various Mictil questions

[Freyland]

Hello all

I decided to play as Mictil (sp?) because I wanted to experiment with the school and path of blood. I think I wanted my Pretender to do too much; a number of cool spells involve another magic Category, so I made my bat-winged Pretender have level 9 blood, level 4 death and level 4 fire. Needless to say, I had few points left for everything else and my starting fortress sucks. I may have 76 resources at best, and this is surrounded by mountains.

For starters, I find Mictil to require poop-loads of micromanaging. I need to find blood slaves (LOTS of blood slaves), I have poor researchers, I have to patrol provinces, I have to spend turns raising just a few slaves per guy, I have to tie up guys doing sacrifices and to top it off, if I have my Pretender do any spell casting, I lose more than half of my research potential. Furthermore, I am having a very hard time raising troops. What am I doing wrong? I do recognize that with my heavy magic distribution on the Pretender, Sacred troops are a must (Attack, strength, fear and curse bonuses), but money is tight. Speaking of recruiting sacred troops, I noticed for the first time on the recruiting screen there is a Category "Holy". This drops as I recruit sacred troops, so I assume it is limiting me somehow. Can I increase that with temples?

When performing blood sacrifices to raise dominion, does the level of the priest make a difference? Does proximity to the edge of your dominion border make a difference, or can you just do it all in your capital?

Despite my many shortcomings described above, I seem to be beating my opponents. I have Caelum, Arscopele and Jotun on my borders and I have nearly eliminated Aroscapel, pushed back Caelum and sent glaring looks at Jotun. I am playing the Eye of the Desert map on the "hard" difficulty (below impossible). It seems like I should be getting my butt handed to me, especially since Caelum and Jotun are ignoring each other.

The Call Lesser Horror spell requires 2 blood slaves and results in 200 fatigue. My Moon Priest, for 230 gp, has the required skills, but does not use more than two blood slaves to reduce his fatigue so he can run. Thus, I lose 230 gp and a few slaves to clean out an enemy province. I am stuck taking the loss of this priest each time I cast the spell, or do I have other options?

Okay, I apologize for the rambling text. Thank you for listening.

Jonathan