[Executor]

No need to push research from the start with Ermor, their mages aren't capital only, so you're not missing anything.
They also have strong death(skull mentors) and can forge lanters later, however no starting death income so manual site searching is what I'd do from the start.
Lord of the Gates IS very interesting with all those free shades spawn.

Here's something that worked like a charm when I played EA C'tis, even weaker troops and couldn't use chariots due to bad scales(sloth 3 turmoil 3). I recruted holy 3 priests for the first 10 or so turns and just started smiting everything! A group of 3-4 smithers is ridiculously strong.
In this strategy you go against knights and other strong but few in numbers enemies.
It was an all era game, and I expanded the fastest of the 20 or so nations.