[AreaOfEffect]

First, I don't really consider it a side strategy. Second, I find blood searching with non-blood mages to be highly unreliable. I've had dozens upon dozens of commanders searching before and turned up nothing. In my experience, using non-blood mages as a source of reliable blood slaves is like using luck 2 as a reliable source of water gems.

With a blood god you can reliably shell out a magic site a turn around turn 16. That means that by the fifth year you are outputting 50 gems a year from your capital and blood stones alone. That's 1525 Earth gems generated by turn 60 minus the cost of construction, which is only about 261 gems (including the cost of one pair of earth boots and 2 dwarven hammers). 1200+ gems is not a side strategy, it's a winning one, particularly with dozens of earth 4 mages running around and increased gem income from site searching .