[Baalz]

The other thing to consider to, is that Jaguar Warriors are cheap, holy (cheap to maintain) and not capital only, so there is something to be said for taking only a single bless and good scales (turmoil, sloth, growh, luck, magic) so you can castle up and mass them more readily. This has the added advantage of letting you crank out the cheapo priests who are pretty cost effective researchers in addition to being good blood hunters (particularly with magic-3 scales)....which has a synergy there in that they're available to blood sacrifice in all your templed castles and spread your good dominion (with a high dominion score and a bunch of blood sacrificers a dominion push can be carried out against any other nation). Sloth is pretty much a given for this nation, I find turmoil is as well because it hurts you proportinally less as much of your gold income is going to be lost to blood hunting anyway.

Jaguar warriors are plenty deadly with just a single bless, and don't overlook the 4th level blesses. I find just the +2 attack from a 4th level fire bless is enough to make a significant difference as it gives them a reasonable chance to hit the higher defense units if they can outnumber them.

I find the key to jaguar warriors is to remember that they have low armor and low defense, so no matter how you bless them they're gonna be expendable to a certain degree. So rather than trying to squeeze out a tiny bit more survivability with a third (or second!) bless, I'm more inclined to focus on being able to have more of them. Wouldn't you rather have twice as many than have the double attack of a water bless?

PS.You HAVE to start blood hunting by the second turn for exactly the reasons you describe. Either your prophet or a priest you recruit on the first turn, but every turn you go with just a single dominion candle is a turn you're just asking to lose.