Soul Gate Ermor tips?

[LintMan]

Thnaks everybody for all the information/advice!

I created a test game and played some turns and have a few more questions:

1 - It seems the unholy priests are unable to preach. So you're left with just temples, prophet & pretender to boost your dominion? Does this prove to be a big liability?

2 - My home province only started with ~7K pop - is this a map setup, or something related to SG Ermor?

3 - Is it worth pillaging your provinces to try to eek a bit more money out of them before all the pop dies? Or summon apparitions at 100 pop(!) apiece? Or is it better to try to prolong the pop survival to get continued tax income?

4 - I notice that my home province has some gold income despite having no population in the province. And the Ermorian castle is 0-admin,so there shouldn't be any income from surrounding provinces. On my most recent turn the 70 income dropped to 66, and I'm puzzled by that also. I built another castle to see if they all do this, but it does not have any income. I assume this is some sort of home-province bonus?

5 - If my domain spread out into indy provinces, they should start to die off. If I wait long enough, will this serve to starve out the indy troops and eventually kill them off?

6 - I like using mercs a lot, but the gold situation seems really tight... Are using mercs a bad idea for ermor?

7 - A rabble of troops gathers in all provinces. Actually getting those troops to where they're needed seems rather micromanagement intensive. Do people tend to keep circulating leaders to constantly gather up these forces, or is it more typical to wait unti there is a large horde waiting before sending a commander over to collect them?

Thanks everyone!