[Shovah32]

Until you get up to nether darts i personally would say ctis has the advantage in battle magic due to skeleton raising.

Ctisian troops do more damage than those of ermor and ermors only high prot troops(17, a number which is matched by the generally superior swamp guard) suffer from old age and so are slow, weak and quick to tire. Ctis has superior ranged firepower imo(both nations has javelins, ctis has poison slingers), both nations have standards.

Ermor suffers from its best mages being capitol only which is a big deal in larger games and ermor only has regular assasins.

Imo ermor only has 3 real advantages:
1)Tower shields, these make their troops difficult to harm with missile fire but a screen of swampguards can do the same job unless the enemy is firing into combat.
2)Reanimation. If i have a castle i'll be making mages rather than cultists and generally have better things to do with my mages than make a few skeletons per turn(and ctis can also raise alot in battle)
3)Astral magic. While ctis can get the same levels in astral as ermor due to couatls(meaning they have the same astral summoning/forging abilities) they cant get it in anywhere near the numbers ermor can. They also dont have access to nether darts but have skele spam and various other death and nature spells.

edit:I was considering machaka but they are either very lacking early game or quite weakened later due to scales. They almost require an awake pretender to survive on smaller/crowded maps(yes you can have a big bless but those spiders are expensive) and take a while to start up.