[zepath]

I loaded up Sanguinia today to get some play-testing done as I've been terrible about testing my nations much after releasing them. Shovah32's strategy of tricking out Sanguine Counts with decent magic items and letting them loose on an enemy army with a blessing and Stoneskin or Ironskin is pretty nasty. However, I took a Death-5/Blood-5 Vamp Queen as a pretender instead of a high Earth magic god as Shovah suggests. Still, I didn't have to worry about the spread of my dominion most of the time because the Counts simply would not die. The Counts were given Heart Finder Swords, Lead Shields, the cheap strength-boosting boots, and attack/defense skill boosting misc items. With PD 35 (thanks to a random event) in the home province, I had very little trouble scooping up blood slaves (taking ~10/turn) to make items and then to sick Infernal Disease on enemy commanders. Stalkers, who could cover the entire map in two-three turns in bat form, were given the disease-spreading amulets and sent to the AI capitals. I culled two AI nations in this way -- weakening their base and then invading with uber-Counts supported by Blood Drakes -- before being obliterated by another of my mod nations, Sylvania, who simply had many more troops and those (damn) Aspect Archers.