[Sheap]

It's true that I didn't understand your plan entirely at first. Preserving gold income longer and trying to keep your living population and units longer is an interesting choice. Since you are containing your own dominion as much as possible, you can still take suck-for-scales. Really, this strategy works for anyone, not just AE-ermor. In a way it might even be worse for AE-ermor because you don't have any nation-specific troops to recruit in your provinces. You'll be dependent on indy living units and fewer freespawns than normal, and you won't have any order to boost your economy, leaving you still worse economically than a normal nation. And, your living troops won't be able to go into the "death zone" because of supply problems. You'll be short in the military department with a bunch of units that don't really work well together.

While it's true that skull mentors are immune to drain, the mages that use them aren't. Even if you add another +research item to each mage, you are still looking at ~30% drop in total research. But, if you can keep them out of your drain-afflicted territory, you could cut that down to more like 15% for not having magic, which is probably acceptable.

In a really big map the strategy seems better, not only because you have more time to "boot up" but because you can keep your dominion out of more of your own provinces.

It is definitely unconventional, I will give you that much. I guess I am not convinced that there is enough of a gold bonus compared to just pillaging everything to death, since once your dominion DOES get into a captured province, everyone will still die promptly.