[Micah]

Shovah's on the right track...of course your golem's gonna die with 6 prot and a horrible defense score. Marble armor gets you 23 body prot and something like 18 on the head...add in body eth and luck and you're pretty much set against any raiding force or PD. Though all of the talk about reinvig items is kind of not worth it on a golem, since they're 0-enc and you'll only get a bit of fatigue casting buffs (generally I just script BE and luck, leaving out astral shield, since crossing 30 fatigue is a bad idea, possibly worth it vs some low MR troops though)

Just to cover the basics all you need are a brand, a skullcap, and marble armor...add perks as needed for resists. Bone armor/marble boots gives you soul vortex, but is generally very much overkill.

Things you should do with your golem: Raid, kill enemy raiders, abuse the fact that they can cast teleport. Abuse lifeless/mindless (hitting blood hunters is great, since life for a life and leech won't work). Abuse the fact that they're immune to most remote spells (barring a whole bunch of seeking arrows)

Things you should NOT do with your golem: Go near most enemy mages, especially skel spammers or astral mages. Hold still. Think that he's an SC. Attack anything that might take longer than 50 turns to kill. Make it easy to guess where you're going.

Golems are excellent units, and some of the hardest to use properly IMO. They're the best raider in the game, but they are NOT SCs.

And Juzza, if you want to burn 100 gems on a golem and have him run around with your army so he can die to a random magic duel then be my guest...there's no sort of cost efficiency there whatsoever. Loading a couple of em up with eyes/smashers/skullcaps/crystal coins and having them be a mind hunt squad safe at home could work if you can't come up with astral mages any other way though. (Assuming an S/E pretender that can make some golems of course.)

The stupid Crystal Shield is also 8 points of fatigue per spell cast, dropping it for a Power of the Spheres cast (33 fatigue at S3) will pay itself back in fatigue in 6 combat rounds, and at one pearl/battle it'll be a long while before you'll lose out on gems. Also not sure how you get 10 reinvig from boots of the messenger (4) and a girdle of might (3)