Blood Kings: Lanka vs. Mictlan

[Aleph]

I didn't find the Tlahuelpuchi all that expensive (25 blood is a notable expense, maybe 3 provinces, but not a heavy one for a blood economy, and it has no maintenance, while 160 gold might be 2 provinces with maintenance), but I can see some of your point - that gold recruitable reanimators are pretty potent as an early game weapon, and might be what tips Lanka from powerful to most dominant.

Let's leave LA Ermor out of this - the majority of your Lankan bloodhunters /researchers are going to be the 90 gold H1 priests, since the research differences with the H2 160 gold models are negligible when both are carrying skull mentors whereas the price is notably different, and the 90 gold is still more efficient at research on a cash-per-point basis. LA Ermor has all the H1 gold recruitable priests it wants to summon soulless in the wake of battle/domain kill, and it cares less about the downsides of ghouling your population as well (since it's not triple dipping for ghouls/blood/gold). While in the extreme late game (once a good gold/research conversion is no longer important) Lanka could readily have more people capable of summoning Longdead infantry than LA Ermor (although overcoming the domain summons as well is a high bar), Ermor's national priests can summon Longdead Horsemen, and their temples/forts summon Ermorian uniques, who are a vastly different level of useful.

I'm not playing MP, so the balance issues aren't so bothersome to me, and while Lanka is rock-hard it seems that EA already has a lot of radical power fluctuations (most of the Heims, for example). But one of the things I love about Dominions is how thoroughly it realizes certain concepts, such as "the undead nation" or "the Cthulhu nation" to an extent unseen in other games. Lanka intruding on Mictlan's brand identity of "blood nation", or Ermor's identity as "undead nation", threatens that aspect of the game's appeal. Therefore the framing of the original post, and therefore the defense of ermor.

Aside - Longbowmen, likely not such a big deal in MP. When you take out badly placed spellcasters in your deviation fire from archers in SP, pretty valuable.