[Humakty]

1. No, but I made a rush with hundreds of undeads, only to be slowed by their home province, The Cathedral (funny there is the same sort of site on the gates). The AI clearly suffers less from lack of gold (difficult level), and with a classic faction, I think I would have been outnumbered and beaten, even if I owned two times more provinces. When I reached them they had two castles, but they did not control more than the half of the inner city.
All of this balances quite a bit because the AI tends to suicide on the special provinces.
I think it would be more fun wth one more party in and one more party out of the walls.

2. Yes, I don't know what I would have done without my longdeads.

3. yes, but as undeads are crappy, and the low supplies bans big armies, I was only able to take the Motheroak.
How many sites are in each province ? I found only two in Mother oak (without acashic record). The Market Outside the wall is really funny. (12 huge elementals !!)The one with Bogus+an army is maybe too strong, lost a strong army (80+regular units,prophet and a support mage)without killing anyone.

4.Thugs are clearly the solution, maybe the only one, but I haven't done it , most of my mage/priests reanimate all the time.
Don't know for the rewards, motheroak is good.

My dragon was rapidly injured (chest wound), hopefully I wasn't clumsy enougth to send him on a special province, which,I think, can take out almost any early thug/SC.

In the walls I found the Akadomeia, which is one of arcos national : you can't recruit from it, apart if you are Arcos

I forgot one thing : those damn events, regularly giving me hordes of useless and costly chaff, a real pain in the rear with neutral luck, a sure death with +3 luck. Need to be a good logistician to send them die as soon as they appear.
It would be great if we could mod the events, but I don't think it is possible.