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[Shadowlord]

I too go with 6 as a minimum, but raise it for border provinces, forts, and anywhere I'm blood-hunting. I don't raise border provinces ridiculously high, though, because a Real Army or good SC will knock over any amount of PD, and because the costs get quite extreme as you increase PD. (10 pd costs 55 gold. 20 costs 210. 30 costs 465. You could buy 58 res-8 units for that - e.g. marignon's crossbowmen.)

[Frumple]

Yeah, the more you invest the more you better get out of it. If you can leverage that 58 crossbows worth of gold to kill 59 or up, you're golden. If you can't, maybe find somewhere else to put the dosh.

... mind you, that usually doesn't happen if you just leave the PD by itself. You use major PD provinces to screen for mages or cav or whatev', basically treating them as a regenerating chaff blob. One that, do remember, costs no upkeep and consumes no supplies, and only really attritions if you lose the province or something... happens... to its population, if there's no fortress. Can be totally worth the investment if you have some way to force the enemy to attack the province they're in, or just if the PD sticks around long enough.

[E. Albright]

It's also worth remembering that up to a given point for most poptypes, PD gives you more troops than an equal amount of gold, and there's no resource limit to keep you from getting all those troops right now. It's less flexible, etc., but the "always 1 PD but never more than 1 PD" purists you'll find elsewhere don't know what they're talking about.

[EnigmaticHat]

Also worth pointing out that 1 PD could conceivably be beaten by scouts.  Or like... a scout.  Depending on what the PD is.  Really like ~5 is better and it barely costs more.

[Kagus]

Also depending on the scout. Like, Ur.

[Delta Foxtrot]

1 or 6, for reasons mentioned. Sometimes I go above if the situation calls for it. Some indies in particular seem to punch above their cost. Crossbows are particularly lovely, though even barbarians can smash faces with one or two durability buffs.

[E. Albright]

I'm a big fan of Horse Tribe cavalry. Or - heh - Shark Tribe tritons.

[ThtblovesDF]

Best way to kill undead ethereal things? Does ethereal counter banishment spam or not? What about mindblasts?

[Shadowgandor]

Ethereal just makes it harder to hit with physical attacks. Magical damage goes through just fine. This means banishment spam is a valid counter versus nations like Lemuria

[Frumple]

Mmhmm. Mindblast works as well on ethereal undead as it does on any (i.e. if they're not mindless it hits just fine). Best way depends on what you have access to, ha. Banish spam is usually effective, any way of chucking around large/battlefield-wide bundles of magic damage will probably do a number on them. As SG notes, about the only undead counter that ethereal counters is taking an army up into their face and beating on them, and I think the occasional raw physical damage spell. And that's as conditional as ever if you have a way to mass apply some form of magical damage to said facebeaters.

[Kagus]

Thing is, ethereal undead will generally have considerably better MR than their corporeal counterparts, so banish spam will be slightly less effective than you might expect. Still a good choice as always though.

Also, lots of strange little things have magical weapons which bypass the etheral evasion. EA Atlantis has infantry with basalt spears, which are considered magic weapons, and there are a number of other nations with recruitable magic-weapon units.

If you have access to nature, there are also giant mantises... Strangely, the regular ol' giant mantis shares its weapon type with the horror mantis, so it's considered a magical weapon. Not a bad deal all in all, but as with most animals they've got absolutely dreadful MR.

And if you're playing as R'lyeh, any form of "drain life" attack or the meteorite tridents will pop them just as well as any other magic attack, if you wanna attack them with expensive stuff.

[Shadowgandor]

Hmm Lemuria seems like a ton of fun with a triple bless. I tried D9, F9, N9 and my Censor could solo 400+ sized armies in early/midgame. I cleared multiple thrones using only that guy and the only equipment he had was from the death battles, where he killed all kinds of giant nastiness.
I eventually left him on a throne in the middle of hostile territory where two nations were constantly sending enormous armies at him while he was in -5 dominion and he survived for nearly 30 game (not battle) turns before he was killed.

In late game when armies starts using bigger spells he falls off a bit but well, not a bad deal for 25 death gems. I did have to take negative 3 scales except luck, which was kept at 0 and a demilich with dom4 and awake. I have to experiment a bit more with it awake or not being worth it. It'll take about 6 turns before you can start producing mages otherwise, which is a huge huge amount of research time lost. You can turn your starting commander into a prophet, but he's not immortal and ethereal so as a thug, he'll be less impressive. Never tried using the 1h priest you start with as a thug, perhaps that could work due to the F9, D9 bless giving it a ton more damage and N9 bless granting it more HP while also being ethereal. Having an imprisoned pretender + misfortune 3 would allow a fourth bless. In theory, leaving a thug on all provinces should easily be doable with Lemuria and looking at the effectiveness of my first experiment, they should be more than capable of dealing with whatever nastiness pops up in a territory. I wonder what the fourth bless should be, I'm thinking W9 or E9. E9 would allow more skellie spam and general tankiness, while W9 would also increase tankiness through defence, while also allowing 1.5x more attacks and reaching the enemy earlier.

Gee I just noticed I started rambling quite a bit. Still posting it here to see what others think. Probably would work horribly in multiplayer and dom kill is a valid threat, but it seems doable.

[ThtblovesDF]

https://larzm42.github.io/dom4inspector/ says Gift from Heaven does 150 Dmg (with 3 effects?) - but Ingame they always seem to do between 950 and 999 Damage?

[Frumple]

Probably the effects.

As for lemuria, the consuls are basically discount wrath lords that take no research, i.e. they're sodding amazing, quite possibly one of the best national summons in the game for their price and accessibility. That said, they totally don't need a triple bless to do just about everything you want them to do -- I usually go major WN, minor earth (though the latter is more for the actual casters). It's enough to take almost any indie province, and most throne ones, too, if you bring in three or four at a time. And that's all you need until you can get some research and forging going and start kitting the critters out and bringing in chaff screens and proper caster backup.

You can actually sorta' get away with taking a dormant or imprisoned pretender, since your native D income is pretty high and you can empower one of your starting units to be able to start bringing in your summons. It slows you down fairly substantially but once your consuls start rolling out there's not much indie province wise that can stop you, and you can put out one (i.e. what amounts to a new expansion army) every two or three turns, even assuming you don't find more death sites.

That said, the consuls are discount wrath lords -- they don't have the D3 that makes the lords so thuggable, and their basic weapon is utter shite. They're just about your best army leader, as well as really good thugs throughout the game and zogging incredible ones when you can first get them, but that's all they are. You can build a strategy that utilizes them heavily but if you go all in on em yer going to be right buggered -- you still need to leverage your casters and freespawn, and for all lemuria doesn't need much scale wise dropping that luck or magic is overall a pretty bad idea.

[Kagus]

Actually, centurions ARE ethereal. They're just not sacred or immortal, but they also only take D1 and 5 gems to summon. They still have the same fear/cold aura as the consuls, and the same equipment, but slightly worse combat stats. Sure, consuls are badass, but centurions will definitely pull their own weight. Especially considering the cost. And if you're going to be keeping them in negative-dom areas where their immortality can't really take effect, you might as well use centies...

E9 generally isn't worth it. The +5 protection is applied as natural protection BEFORE equipment is taken into consideration, so you very rarely get the full +5. And just five points, especially in LA, really doesn't mean a whole lot. Meanwhile, all your troops and commanders are Enc 0 and will only accrue fatigue through spellcasting or some special effects. In some cases E9 is amazingly useful, but those are generally special-case scenarios.

And nothing is worth taking Misfortune 3, especially not with a bunch of other negative scales (Drain in particular). Remember that Lemuria also benefits quite a bit from forts/temples, and gold is hard to come by when you murder all your taxpayers.