Newbie enjoying undead, looking for advice

[Aleph]

Do either of you have strong thoughts on the choices between the two? My thoughts seem to change after every game, but right now Master Lich is looking pretty good for a long game - F/A/E/N 2 W 3 S 6 D 5 lets him start out as a site searcher, kick off the Naiad/clam economy, and move easily to S 9 or D 9 with items alone - and if need him for an SC I can always Wish him to power. Is including Wish in my strategies sort of besides the point for Ermor?

Aside 1 - is there a way to know which creatures are vulnerable to aging? Undead not, obviously, and I'd assume demons and any recuperating creature. Anyone else?

Aside 2 - How does the national spell Soul Gate work? It's not in the manual and its blurb isn't clear.

Aside 3 - every once in a while, when playing LA Ermor with dominion 10, I get a message that my troops have been beaten somewhere, and I pop to the location to find a place with reasonable amounts of my dominion way the heck in the middle enemy territory where I have never been. What's going on here.

[Meglobob]

Aleph said:
Aside 3 - every once in a while, when playing LA Ermor with dominion 10, I get a message that my troops have been beaten somewhere, and I pop to the location to find a place with reasonable amounts of my dominion way the heck in the middle enemy territory where I have never been. What's going on here.

Your dominion creates free undead spawn, thus a enemy province is getting your undead spawned in it, resulting in a battle of PD vs undead spawn.

Why the dominion spreads so far away is strange...I have had this with other 10 dominion nations, was like getting free spy reports.

[Sandman]

Aside 3 - every once in a while, when playing LA Ermor with dominion 10, I get a message that my troops have been beaten somewhere, and I pop to the location to find a place with reasonable amounts of my dominion way the heck in the middle enemy territory where I have never been. What's going on here.

It's a special event that sees another player attacked by 'ermorian cultists'. If they win, you get the province and a handful of troops. It's linked to misfortune and death scales, IIRC.

[Aleph]

So, not really a function of anything I do, then.

Soul Gate - I get it, roughly, but I'm still looking for details. Is the dealout random? I know it varies by temple, but there's several kinds of ghoulies and I like some of the rarer ones.

New Aside - is there any way to automate site searching? I use Dark Knowledge for all the death sites, but it gets really tiresome for the others and I don't have the numbers of Astral Mages, or the desire to throw around so many pearls, to make Akashic worthwhile. Is there any way to automate either physical searching or spell based searching? (And if not, may I suggest the latter for dominions 4?)

[Aleph]

Oop - nevermind on the searching question, there's a topic easily found on that.

I'm fully in favor of the Master Lich now, BTW - in part due to easier multipathing, and in part due to the extra misc item slot. Ring of Wizardry/Ring of Sorcery/other path boosting item is really nice.

[Shovah32]

If you can get the masterlich to dom9-10 with the paths you want cheaper than the lichqueen go for it, otherwise i would probably go with the queen.

[Agrajag]

Regarding the choice between Lich Queen and Master Lich - I just use the exact same build with both pretenders, and see which one costs less points, and choose according to that.
The difference in the chassis itself isn't that important, since neither pretender is a good candidate for turning SC.

[Shovah32]

Well imortality, awe from the dominion and versatile paths for buffing makes them both atleast decent thugs and, iirc, the lich queens stats arent too bad.