[Peter Ebbesen]

Sheap said:
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.

Not quite. The only living troops I'll recruit are indy mages and mercenaries [and I have the income to pay top dollar for them, practically guaranteeing that I get them, thus also depriving others of early game expansion boost], plus some cheap archers/crossbowmen if I come across them (though preferably not - upkeep is bad except for mages) - makes for an awesome (and cheap!) combination. As for the "death zone", that's only in the core of the realm, and that's not where the living troops are being used - they are being used on the fringe to expand the empire, so the "death zone" is irrelevant to the use of living independents/mercenaries.

And while fewer undead will be generated, you'll still get plenty enough from your capital and provinces nearest it once dominion overspills from the capital to keep beating up independents, even at the higher independent settings. NOT enough to deal with a player early on, of course, but again, that was one of the stipulated risks of this gambit.

Once you start building multiple castles (which you'll do very quickly), you'll start getting good undead as well, though you'll have decidedly fewer chaff since you won't have anybody reanimating soulless until your pretender awakes.

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.

Err, you mean an increase of ~30% research going from drain to magic, not a drop of 30% going from magic to drain (a standard 0 XP spectator drops ~23%, revant 25%, dusk elder 20% - unless I remember numbers wrong) - and as researchers gain XP, it keeps dropping. Also, in case one runs across independent mages it may look better for the drain side who can afford them better - and then again, it might not. Anyhow, I guess we just have different playing styles, for while I'd deem such a gap significant in a short game, I don't consider it really significant in a long game - so long as I don't get beat to both the AQs and the artifacts.

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.

Yes - small map is a no-no for this gambit, a medium is "give it a thought, just in case", a big is "give it a serious thought"... and if in doubt, just play conventional and safe.

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.

Try it out - I'm definitely not going to say based on my limited tests of this that it'll always pay off for long games or that sticking to a conventional tactic isn't, on average, better - but I do consider it a fun experiment and have been sort of surprised by how well it worked out - it takes a LONG time before your expanding periphery of provinces get more than a few candles since the first 10-13 rounds or so you'll generate a total of home province + 1 temple check per round. Provinces also survived for a surprisingly long time when you've only got 1-2 candles in them. There's really little reason to have more provinces dying off quickly than you can afford to build castles in.

It does feel a bit counterintuitive to not start building temples until you feel threatened, want an area to preemptively be safer for your pretender to move around in, or decide that that 9-10 dominion castled province really deserves to provide Knights of the Unholy Sepulchre, though, and to be happy when other players dominions cross seas and rivers to dominate your periphery, which can happen.