[Alneyan]

I believe you could actually recruit the Black Dryads for a long while; what if you put an Idol or three in your capital city? This should drop your Dominion to 0, hence resulting in no population loss, while possibly allowing your scales to remain in the capital.

Resources require 10 population per resource, or 1,000 inhabitants to use all your resources (I believe it is the latter, but cannot swear it is so), so you would only need to preserve a small part of your population to produce units in the capital. Gold would, of course, be another matter.

I have been intrigued by Carrion Woods, but do not know what sort of Pretender to pick. What would be your rough advice on the matter? (Either I end up with a Pretender too focused, or one unable to do anything well)