[DrPraetorious]

I've been very pleased with both of my sacred-unit heavy mid-period Ermor builds.

At first glance, the Shadow Vestel appears to be a young naked girl - appealing, but not militarily useful.

The first thing to note is that her "Shadow Spear" gives her a damage of 14, so she can hurt mid-period heavy infantry just fine. She'll have trouble hurting certain heavy cavalry units, but with a water blessing she'll manage.

The second thing is that "Power of the Sepulchre" is pre-researched and gives them a decent attack rating.

Finally, they're cheap and you buy ten per turn.

With an Astral-9 blessing and a Water-9 blessing (achievable, along with modest income scales and a dominion strength of 10, out of an imprisoned Oracle), she becomes authentically tough, in spite of her lack of a protection stat. Ignoring 3/4 of all incoming hits is even better when you get to do it twice. The combination of water-9 and power of the sepulchre gives her enough AP to not worry too much about archers, and the astral blessing makes her essentially immune to banishment.

You can live without the astral-9 blessing - a dominion-7,water-9 blue dragon gives you early expansion like crazy. But I think I prefer the imprisoned Oracle.

Kailasa (early period) has frickin' awesome sacred units - consider Death-9 or Fire-9, bless those longbowmen. Bandar Log's sacred units have never impressed me.