Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice

[Aleph]

Went away to a party, came back to some nice advice.

In my most recent MA Ermor restart, I'm trying an imprisoned oracle, S9D9, with Magic 3 Sloth 3, dominion 6, and possibly something else... but I think that's it. I'm on one of the premade maps with 200+ provinces, since my large/random LA Ermor game ended before I got anywhere near 9th level spells. I appreciate those saying that F9 or W9 are better for sacred, but part of the whole allure of the undead forces is the kind of spells high level death magic brings, and I really wanted wish. Plus, even without Twist Fate it seemed that the vast majority of the early/midgame damage my vestals were taking was Banishment, so Astral it is.

shovah - were you saying C'tis is better than MA Ermor, or just than LA Pangea? I could see it either way, since Ermor's high level mages are very pricey and if lizard-dead are better than human dead that's a reasonable argument. And any idea why the book claims that the Sacred Serpents are unsuited to a bless approach?

pdf - I don't yet understand the game mechanics enough to grok the pros and cons of death vs. fire. Are you saying that fire weapons are actually better than death weapons, or that the attack bonus is better than the affliction bonus?

tibbs - I agree. I actually didn't find out that you can raise armed soulless from battlefield corpses until I played MA Ermor, since I had so many freespawned mound kings that I just threw them with freebie longdead/soulless/ghouls at most problems and rarely bothered slowing down to reanimate.