[hnchrist3]

Luck +3 is mandatory. It will be your greatest generator of gold (particularly after you cast Utterdark), {you WILL won't you?} as the gold you acquire during "events" will be real and not modified by Utterdark's 90% reduction.

In a recent game I had a double, "3000 gold and a magic item" in one turn! (Under Utterdark!)

I used to go luck -3 for the magics, but as long as you have a Pretender with something in *all* paths, there is no real advantage to the extra points. (The reason is to avoid the 50 gem 'penalty' for getting into a magic path.)

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With the change, you should go +200% taxation in all provinces, to extract the maximum income, and to ruin it for anyone else who decides to conquer it.
Taking a province is one thing... Keeping it is another.
Bwaaaaaaa--ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
(Excuse me: Ha!)
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In the end, Ermor is a freak. Worse yet, everyone hates it (just as everyone, including Ermor, hates R'Lyeh). Against R'Lyeh your troops/commanders go insane in its dominion. Against Ermor, (their) troops/commanders starve. The difference is that starvation is curable, and insanity is not.

Viva la mort!

Oh yeah, and to answer mathusalem, what are you building so many castles for anyway? If you have Soulgate up all you need a temple (400 as opposed to 800 gold) and you'll get freespawn priests that will crank out undead by the thousands. Not only that, your only 3 sources of dominion increase are: Pretender; Prophet; temples. [OK, you can buy living priests to preech as well, but you have to pay upkeep!] But you can only recruit a (living) priest where you have built a temple anyway.