Late age R'lyeh vs Ermor

[Nightblade]

Hello,

I am currently learning how to play R'lyeh in the late age in a better way.
While i won 2 games in the past as LA R'lyeh(i enjoyed casting the Dreams of R'lyeh repeatedly) and so think i begin to understand R'lyeh concept, i decided to try to face my nemesis on Silent Seas : Ermor Ashen Empire.

As i am not really experienced enough with R'lyeh on the possible game openings Rlyeh can follow without compromising itself in the long term, i decided to put 2 more AI nations, so Ermor should not just crush me in the first year.

Of course, i was very wrong and in the middle of the 2nd year, Ermor had crushed one AI, had nearly got rid of the 2nd with its dominion, and had invaded most of my sea provinces leaving me without any gold :
Without enough provinces, the upkeep was then killing my economy as my bad choices of scales was already cutting the income and population.

The free spawns were never enough to face the neverending undead hordes, and adding more PD were out of question, the income being already negated.

An error i got was to wait a bit too many turn before moving, as i was researching as much as possible to cast better spells, and the enemy province level was a bit too strong in my judgement for my pitifull "army".
I should have got more troop too in the beginning, instead of magic users as it really put my economy low.

So i come here for some help.
In such circumstances :
-map Silent Seas warparound
-me as LA Rlyeh
-AI LA Ermor
-2 minor other LA nations (random selected) that will crushed by Ermor anyways
-the province strenght should be just a bit more than default.

What could be a good pretender, its magic paths, and what could be good scales to not lose so many gold and get enough priestly power to counter a bit the undead hordes ?

Then in such situation, what is a good opening for LA R'lyeh to avoid losing badly later , especially with the LA Ermor undead machine.

As in that setup my dominion was really not enough (i had put it to 6 , i wanted to reserve points for some increased magic path) to help me in that game (bad luck, Ermor got a stronger dominion in that game), i guess an imprisonned pretender is totally out of question so less bonus for the creation.

So i suppose with Ermor as the main opponent, having a very strong dominion should be one of my goal when building the pretender, as making the undead commanders insane could help to limit their impressive quick expansion.

Any suggestion about the strategy to use in such case ?