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More thoughts on ermor:

Dominion 10 is IMO unnecessary. If you are trying to push your dominion, you are just naturally going to build enough temples to boost it. And you don't have infinite points, you just have a whole lot. You can spend your points better.

You don't have to do dominion-push to play Ermor. Without preaching, it's hard to "aim" your hostile dominion. If you push too much, you will probably end up annoying everyone around you, and then they'll all kill you. Especially with AE, which is not dependent on immortal units, you can easily advance out ahead of your dominion like everyone else, then plant temples in captured territory.

In reality the only thing your dominion does for you economically is generate freespawns. But the thing about the freespawn horde is that it tends to get blown up entirely or not at all. So you don't need to fight in friendly dominion to replace your losses.

Soul Gate only gets dispossessed spirits without a fort/temple, and only if there is still population alive in the province. Ashen Empire only gets soulless and plain longdead. In general, AE troops seem to be even more numerous than SG troops, although both of them come in bushels. AE units are larger and take up more space on the battlefield.

For SG, upgrading to a proper armored temple gives you ghosts, apparitions, and spectral soldiers. Ghosts and apparitions are genuine good units by any standard. Spectral soldiers rarely do any damage, but some of them cause fear and all of them are ethereal, making them effective at obstructing the enemy army. For AE, you upgrade your longdead and soulless to the warrior variant, and get longdead horsemen and/or knights of the sepulchre. These are also good units by any standard.

I almost never buy an independent mage. The upkeep (and even the initial cost, plus the cost of setting up a lab) will eat you alive. Er. Not alive. The only time I will buy an independent mage is if it has a particular path combination that does something I need, which can't be done conveniently otherwise. Buying sages/witches for research is not real good, IMO. Summon spectres and make skull mentors/lightless lanterns instead. Don't buy too many Dusk Elders, they are much better mages than Spectators/Spectres, but much worse researchers. You need to get the right balance.

As Ulm, use Blade Wind. Blade Wind is especially destructive to Soul Gate troops, which haven't any protection. Wrathful Skies/Orb Lightning work, but actually less effective against Ermor, because the armor negating and stun effects are wasted. The occasional fire spell such as Holy Pyre is also effective. Everyone that doesn't have earth, air, or fire magic should use priests. None of these will help you vs. Ermorian SCs. But they will all help a great deal vs. the regular troops.

Ermor is likely to bring assorted bad weather to battle. Their mages are also likely to cast spells that hurt your troops but not theirs, especially those that can be cast with death magic. Rigor Mortis, Terror, Foul Vapors (which only the pretender is likely to cast since it's not death), etc. etc. There are also plenty of spells that are more (or only) effective against undead. Learning these spells on both sides of the battle is key.

The purpose of Ermorian PD is to provide a leader for the random units that pile up. It's useless on its own. Ermor doesn't really need to defend its territory, anyway. Most likely a large portion of your territory won't do anything useful at all. Only the territory with >1 site, or a really good site, is even worth paying attention to, economically. Ermor has some problems in magically rich games, which give it more to defend, and also erode its natural gem advantage.

Undead units left without undead leaders will either dissolve or rout. They are like magical beings left without magical leaders. In both cases the determining factor seems to be whether the unit is lifeless or not. If lifeless it will dissolve, otherwise it will rout.

Ermor is not real good at defending castles because so many of the units are mindless. Once you've captured an Ermorian castle you have a real decision to make on whether to keep it, or blow it up. Ermorian castles have quality defense, but no admin or supply value at all.

Don't try to fight Ermor by cutting them up with your swords. There are just too many of them.