[Agrajag]

Regarding Ermor's provinces being rendered completely useless:
1) Ermor has a hard time spreading its dominion since the ONLY thing that spreads their dominion is building temples (no preaching available, no blood sacrifices available), so most of the time their dominion won't bother you.
2) Ermor lives and dies by gem supplies, they can't recruit [censored] so they have to rely on a very high gem supply, that means that a smart Ermor player will make efforts to discover all possible magical sites (which is very easy with all their randoms), which will give you plenty of magical gems of all types on all of the previously-Ermorian provinces (unlike provinces from nations that lack certain types of paths etc.).

Obviously, I could just be stupid and misleading, but then again, I don't think I am...