[The Panther]

I am pretty sure that blood is overpowered on these settings. The rich world helps blood hunting in two ways:
1. You can take additional provinces out of circulation because the remaining provinces produce extra gold for you.
2. You can buy the blood mages a lot quicker than usual.

I think that the answer is quite simple. Simply ban ALL blood-hunting for ALL nations. This would even allow you to drop the magic site settings to a number lower than 30 to really reduce the power of SCs and big spells.

This would make Mictlan totally unplayable and Abysia would be badly crippled. The Marignon Diaboloical Faith theme is unplayable as well. As for Jontunheim and Vanheim, they are hurt somewhat without blood hunting, but both are still playable.

I suspect that the given game settings favor Abysia because they can get nice national troops from the rich world and will still be able to blood hunt like crazy for the mass devils. Blood magic will rule this game under the proposed settings.

Actually, I will claim Abysia under the given settings to prove (or disprove!) my theory. I really like the 48 hour pace, though I would ask to delay the game start until next Tuesday when I move into my apartment in Virignia.