I really like the Aboleths of early R'yleh. They are my favorite so far, especially the freespawn from the immobile priests. Only drawback is when you have to invade the land. Since it's early era you can't really depend on heavy infantry from indies (I got a province with "heavy infantry" but they were rather disappointing).
I tried Yomi my first game and got *killed*.
The game is quite a bit harder this time around.