There are 3 varieties of Ermor.

Most of those here who talk about Ermor are talking about Ermor: Ashen Empire (because in Dom1 that was the only Ermor).

But the actual base Ermor is Broken Empire. Broken Empire is also known as Living Ermor, and it has all the frailties of a living nation (supply, gold, resources) while using undead and astral to compliment their living and dead armies.

Traditional Ermor or Ashen Empire is pure undead Ermor. Ashen Empire Ermor dominion kills population at a tremendous rate. There are also no national recruitable troop types, troops are autorecruited in your Dominion and Castles. You must summon most of your commanders, priests, and mages.

Soul Gate Ermor is very much like Ashen Empire, with a killing dominion and no recruitable national troops. Same autorecruit by dominion, just a different take on it along with different commanders and preists (Wraiths).

With Ashen Empire or Soul Gate, you can make super-pretenders. Taking heavy scales, like 3 Turmoil, 3 Sloth, 3 Cold, 3 Death, 3 Luck, 3 Magic (or Drain). This allows you to pump your Dominion very high and make very powerful pretenders. But Broken Empire (Default) cannot do this or it cripples their economy and they have no free autorecruited undead.