First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?

[Networkingguru]

All,
This is my first post here, but I have been lurking for a few weeks. I�ve been playing Dom3 for about a month now (SP only), and I must say, hats off to Illwinter for making a game that manages to feel like Master of Magic while adding an immense amount to it! Granted, there are things I don�t like or would like to see, but there is so much to love in this game that the �warts� are easy to overlook.
Anyhow, on to the point of the post: With so many nation choices, I am having a very hard time finding one in each age that conforms to my preferred style, so I was hoping some of you real veterans could give me some insight. Though this is going to get a bit long-winded, I think the best way to do this is to describe what I like and dislike about the nations I have played in order to give you an understanding of my style. I hope this isn�t too imposing. I also hope that this (relatively) brief summary might help new players when wondering what to expect out of certain nations.
In any event, the nations I have played to a significant degree (all SP) are: Niefelheim, Lanka, and LA Ermor. Of these, I prefer Niefelheim, followed by Lanka. I do not particularly enjoy playing LA Ermor, for reasons I will mention below. Additionally, I have experimented with Helheim, Vanheim, Fomoria, Agartha, and R�lyeh, though I can�t say I really understand any of these well. And the strategy thread seems to be incomplete on most of these, so I really don�t know where to start with most of them.
Niefelheim
Likes/Advantages:
- Great SC/Superthugs that can take a licking and keep on ticking. With the proper bless (E9/N9), good formation, and the right magic items, an army with 2 Gygja, 5 Niefel Jarls, and 25 Niefel giants is almost unstoppable. I�ve seen them take on 20 to 1 odds in single player without a single loss of life. This type of efficiency really appeals to me.
- Great for a bless strategy due to the powerful sacreds
- High (relative) protection/defense/HP. Again, it�s all about keeping them alive. Add the N bless and some good items (Hydra Skin), and they are very, very hard to take down. This makes them very low maintenance. Basically, you are not constantly having to replenish their ranks as they hardly ever die. Cast Gift of Health and you can pretty much forget about them and just drill holes in the enemy.
- Cold dominion. Extra points in pretender design, and domain spreads what the Niefels love.
- Cold aura. Takes down most critters foolish enough to swarm them.
- Berserkers. These guys do NOT run. The only time I ever saw a 32 unit army get beat was by an Ermor army of 890 units. The Niefels fought to the death and took 380 poor souls with them.
- Strong Early/Middle game. This is the part of the game I like best, so I prefer a nation that is strong during this portion.
Dislikes/Disadvantages:
- Cost. Holy crap, are these things expensive! At 500 for the Jarls and 250 for the giants, a 32 unit army will cost you around 10K gold. On the upside, you can probably expect to get 20+ territories in a huge game before you have to replace any of them.
- Somewhat slow start. With Independents set to 9, you can�t really start expanding rapidly until your first 6 unit army is built, and that will take around 4 turns with taxes at 200.
- Really poor magic diversity/power (IMHO). I find magic tends to take a huge backseat for me when playing with Niefelheim. In order to get good diversity, I need to either track down some good indie mages, or spend a LOT of gems on my mages.
- Below average priests (IMHO). Divine bless is not really available to anyone except your prophet.
- Poor province defense. Against the AI, you can usually count on defending successfully against equal or lower numbers, but if they have more units than you have points in PD, you are probably going to lose the province. This makes hit-and-run tactics against you very attractive, to the point that even the AI does it. Combine that with the fact that until the late game, you are likely only going to have 2 or 3 real armies, and expanding while retaining territory becomes very, very expensive.
- Low research ability. Pretty much have to forge Skull Mentors to keep up.
- High supply use. You pretty much have to forge summer swords to cost effectively keep these guys fed.
- Low numbers of big units. Swarm tactics are very effective against Niefels. If you get surrounded by Barbarians, give it up. Also, area effect spells can be brutal.
- Fire weakness. Late game can be very, very bad.
- Capital only units. Neifelheim�s good units are ALL capitol-only. On a big map, this makes consistent expansion very difficult (you basically have to rotate armies out constantly, always having several being built, travelling to the front lines, and fighting simultaneously. Very tedious.

Lanka
Likes/Advantages:
- Summons. These guys have probably the best summons in the game, making late-game armies that can crush just about anyone (except maybe Niefels, but I am going to test that soon). Davanas and Mandahas are wickedly powerful, and with screened with scores of cheap Gana and supported via scores of Atavi and Bandar archers, can just steamroll through territories. 10 to 1 odds may be pushing it, but I�ve seen them beat 5 to 1 pretty easily with minimal chaff losses.
- Lots of good recruitable units until you can get a blood economy going. Palankashas and Raksharajas supported by the aforementioned Gana/Avanti/Bandar combo can take territories for a good while with minimal losses.
- Probably the best nation to bless. LOADS of sacred units.
- Decent protection/defense/HP. Enough to make a bless strategy with N9 effective, anyhow.
- Decent priests (Mandaha), but you have to summon them. Still, a Divine Bless in each army is nice to have.
- Above average Early/Middle game. Late game is where Lanka comes alive, but they are strong enough to expand quite aggressively until then.
- Decent protection/defense/HP. With a N/E bless, the big units tend to stay alive, and you only have to replace the small (archers/Gana) units, which you can do anywhere that has a fortress and lab. This is much better than the constant army rotation merry-go-round than Neifelheim requires.

Dislikes/Disadvantages:
- Blood reliance. Those summons take a TON of blood to cast. Hard to build the blood economy, as you need a group of blood hunters in each major city along with a good army for riot control.
- Poor magic diversity. Needs indys and empowerment to fully utilize magic.
- Really, really bad PD. Most times, you need to have double the points in PD as the number of units attacking a city to be truly safe. This gets very expensive very fast.
- Low research ability. Needs Skull Mentors.
- Gluttonous/High supply use. These guys are even worse than Niefels in this regard. Need a couple of Cauldrons and at least one Wineskin for every decent sized army.
- Fire weakness. Flaming arrows SUCK.
- Undead/Demons. Banishment SUCKS.

Ermor (LA)
Likes/Advantages:
- Yea ma, no gold! How can you not like a nation that doesn�t use gold or production capability at ALL. It�s great! Thousands of units, 7 gold upkeep. Hurray!
- Kill �em all and let God�.errr�.Me sort them out. Pillage newly conquered provinces, blood hunt to your heart�s content, cast some of those REALLY nasty global enchantments. It�s all good, we don�t need no stinking live people!
- Free units! Spontaneously spawning freebies everywhere. Doesn�t matter what the PD is, really, you always have more than enough units to protect everything. Did I mention they are all free?
Dislikes/Disadvantages:

- Can�t really recruit any other units. No gold.
- MICROMANAGEMENT. Oh my goodness, what a huge pain in the rear! You have to run armies from territory to territory to collect all the dead you �grow� and make them into a proper army. Turns last forever. This reason was actually enough to cause me to quit playing at about mid-game. I like playing on large maps, and this is just masochistic to try and manage on a large (200+ territory) map. Consequently, I�m sure Ermor has many more advantages and disadvantages, but, frankly, I can�t be bothered.

If you are still reading this, I thank you, and would like to know: Do you have any suggestions for good MA/LA nations for me to try? I really want to start MP play, but I am worried that I do not understand enough nations and do not have a good nation pick for MA/LA.

Any help is greatly apprectiated.