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You'll get less chance of afflictions if you research the very first turn with the PoD instead of sending him out blindly.

Your HP during combat are based on the dominion of the province you move from, not the province you are fighting in. Higher HP means less afflictions. Sitting for one turn also allows you to choose your victim, picking the province with the best income/recruitable commander/danger tradeoff. It also should give you a longdead.

If you are able to attack a province immediately neighboring your capital (this is a good idea anyway to stay in high dominion), put your single longdead on attack closest at the front, your PoD at the rear on either attack archers or attack closest. I've seen the longdead survive by a couple volleys of arrows and some melee that would otherwise have been aimed at the PoD. You'll probably spawn another longdead in the new province and you can rinse and repeat.

I'll even take a turn to search with the PoD if dom is not high enough or if I'm missing my longdead chaff. I've never had the PoD retreat because the longdead got killed.

Your initial prophet and army plus hiring archers the first turn can also take on most small (20,30) vanilla infantry/archers indies, or tribal indies if you are lucky enough to come across any. 2 times sermon then smite with the prophet. I hire more of the same shieldmen/archers and shuttle to the front with indy commanders.

I used a D5E6 PoD, those two extra earth points really do help cut down on initial afflictions. I tried D10 instead for more fear and a big affliction bless on Agony from FFAs, but it didn't work, probably because of my drain scales.