MP: The Ascension Wars: MA,12 players, no mods, newb friendly. [Year 4, 8/12 remaining]

[Executor]

A bless strategy is not really a good thing for MA Ermor, don't get sucked in by how awesome the vestals are.
They are too expensive, capital only and too easy to kill. You'd need a high dominion to compensate for the capital only part and a water + astral bless is very expensive for Ermor.

Archers will still massacre your vestals even though they are ethereal.
Anything with moderate or high protection will be extremely hard to kill for them (str 9 and a spear). Even low level spell will make short work of them. They need undead leadership which means you'll lose a lot of early research and likely Grand Thaumaturgs.
And last but not least, Ermor desperately needs some diversity which it can get only with a pretender. Death and astral is what you have, which isn't a lot. Your non cap mages suck.