Nice! I have been waiting for this for a very, very long time. Nice to finally hear some of what was going on down there. It does sound like you did make a few mistakes, but I bet you never make them again
. I think your problems with the ogres were probably twofold. On one hand, your sacreds have high encumbrance coupled with the w9 quickness, so they quickly build up fatigue to be easily crittable. Secondly, while the ogres don't have magic weapons, they do almost all have multiple attacks, which helps make up a bit for the ethereality... when you consider that dreamtime warriors are also very lightly armored, it makes for very easy kills when the high strength ogres finally manage to connect. The ogres are a very brutal opponent in the early game, especially with all the nice buffs they can put on their units right from the get go. Probably your best bet against them would have been to do what llamabeast did in warhammerama - research up evocation and spam stellar cascades. There's not a whole lot the ogres can do to fight heavy stellar cascades spam, and with an astral-heavy nation that is a very good option for fighting them. Another idea might have been to hit his blood hunting provinces with unrest spells, to try to deny him the use of his mawtribe ogres.
Unfortunately after your grueling war with the ogres (believe me I know the feeling, I had a very similar experience against them myself) you really never had a chance against nehekara... iirc at the time you guys went to war he was the most well-researched nation in the game, and a real world power, whereas your research at the time was hurting pretty badly from an extended war against an implacable foe. You did quite well though, smashing his armies. That war cost him the research lead, and significantly reduced his potential to achieve victory in the game. And I salute you for taking out his avatars. Not an easy task when so far behind on the research front. I'm not sure you had any better options than the one you took to fighting them.
By the way, I don't know that dual frost brands would have been the best idea. Remember that undead are 100% cold resistant, so the aoe attack from them would be wasted on skele-spam.
Another Tourmaline in the future is a possibility. Currently Baalz is running Blood Red, which is pretty similar but does have some normal nations as well. If I do start another one I'll make sure to let you know. And be more careful about mods I let in
By the way, wrath of tawhiri. Is that supposed to be a battlefield enchantment, or a one time deal? Also, I support adding a little shock resist to alcheran sacreds.