Caelum Starting Strategy

[incognito]

I had read that thread and found the information valuable, but it did not address many of my more specific questions ie combat pretender vs mage pretender for Caelum, choice of dominions (any threads on different approaches here would be great), fire vs ice (manual and game suggest both have same impact ie lower supplies, etc - what is the advantage of cold 3 for Caelum. Do they not suffer the cold penalties? Until the patch is this true for fire 3 instead or just a typo in the description), all dominion/no magic strategy, and first few turns recommendations (I consider these the most valuable turns in the game).

As far as mind control, I am pretty sure it was a spectre lord independent with an army of longdead and he was definitely controlling my elephants. I had positioned elephants at the top of the map and archers at the bottom. The elephants immediately began to battle each other (when he took the first one), and then subsequently charged down the map to stomp the archers (when he controlled the other two). Brutal to watch and disheartening to see in only your second province, but that is the fun of the game I suppose.

Thanks in advance for any advice.