[Micah]

Yes, K, a naked PoD has issues with cav, and archers as well. You also get scouting reports for a reason. Pick a prov without either on turn 2 and make an enchanted shield, alchemizing for the 5th pearl. Turn 3 you should hopefully have another province you can take that's adjacent to your cap...doesn't matter which one, since your PoD flies. Have your PoD kill the indies and your starting scout bring the shield over and give it to your Prince. He's now pretty much able to solo any indie province between the arrow blocking and the increased defense to stand up to a cavalry charge until the fear kicks in. Avoid the cav altogether if you want, there plenty of other stuff for your flying pretender to pick from. And this is just using national resources, you can do better if you trade.

If by "a little resistant" you mean "completely immune to" then yes, you're right about fear assassins. Fear doesn't work on morale-30 units, end of story.

There are a nuber of effective SC counters, it's true, but if you're letting troops that can kill your SC get into combat with your SC you're not using it very well. Flight is your friend.

And no, you didn't say anything about evo-5, but you did say "powerful magic" so I figured falling fires or something of that level was what you had in mind, since teleporting in mages to spam mind burn, rage and bonds of fire is pretty laughable. Maybe Flaming Arrows, which is level 4 instead of 5, but still, my point is that you're losing over half of your research by going with early priests. You'll have to forgive the naming confusion on my part.

And sure, you might be able to have all that by turn 17, but I bet I can have it quicker than that with an awake pretender and still have a highly mobile raider on top of a well-developed nation.