[Illuminated One]

Hmm, instead of a scout give them an immobile magicless immortal with 4 shapes, each shape can summon elementals. Give it an upkeep of 10000 (you'll never have any money). Make their mages (relatively cheaply) summonable (and maybe recruitable for 0gp at their cap only) and keep the summoning in (add some spells for castles, if possible also for labs and temples, and or maybe a high alchemy bonus whenever you want to build something). You get a nation that is not the slighest interested in their population, not even to the extend of taxing them (but also not killing them).