Quote Originally Posted by lord_khaine View Post
Well actually it is. You cant mix mindless and non-mindless units in a group. its why it so far has been a little hard figuring out what groups to use as bodyguard.
If you have the gems, research, and mages for it, you might consider forging items which summon useful things at the start of a battle, e.g. a Handful of Acorns (N1, Const-2, summons three Vine Men at the start of the battle) or a Bottle of Living Water (W2, Const-6, summons a size-5 Water Elemental at the start of the battle). If you can break into Blood, Lifelong Protection (B2, Const-4, automatically summons two imps each turn) can be pretty decent at keeping assassins busy even if the imps it summons cannot kill the assassin, though it's tainted (in this case, 5% chance of gaining a horror mark each turn) and so any commander bearing one will eventually start to accumulate horror marks, which can lead to random Horrors attacking the mage.

If the mage you're using for the summoning is D2 or can be made to be D2 at a reasonable cost - say, by giving him a Skull Staff (D2, Const-4, +1D) - then you can also have the mage cast Twiceborn (D2, Ench-4, 10 Death gems), which will allow him to return from death once as a Wight Mage. You'll lose any items the mage was carrying and you'll lose any bodyguards who showed up for the fight in which he died, but you'll get to keep the mage, and there's a possibility that he'll gain +1D as a result of the experience. Unfortunately, the mage will keep any afflictions that they picked up in life - including any resulting from their death - as well as the Cursed status and any horror marks they may have gained.

If you can forge it, the Elixir of Life (F2N2, Const-6) might also help your mage survive summoning things from the Void. It's a bit of an awkward item for R'lyeh to forge, though.

Generally speaking, though, I would recommend against investing significant resources into protecting whichever mage you're using to summon things through the Void Gate. You're essentially using them as bait for very powerful monsters which can relatively easily eat most mages, and while R'lyeh's mages are less likely to be attacked than other nations' mages while attempting to attract monsters, the odds are still pretty high that they'll be attacked - assuming the Dom5 void summoning mechanics are the same as the Dom4 void summoning mechanics, my understanding is that most of the creatures which your mage can attract through the Void Gate or the Strange House in the Mist will attack the mage 20% of the time if the mage belongs to R'lyeh or 80% of the time if the mage belongs to some other nation, Dwellers in the Deep will attack R'lyeh mages who call them 40% of the time and non-R'lyeh mages always, and Horrors will always attack any mage unfortunate enough to draw their attention. Your void summoner is going to get attacked, and even if you give him an incredible array of protections he's eventually going to be killed by something he summons, or in the case of tainted protective items by something summoned by his defenses.

That leaves us with the final pick, right? Let's see, I had wanted Caelum, but in a pinch I'll go with... Ulm. It was that or Vanarus, and I'm uncertain how well two such similar nations would play out.
When picking nations to team up in a Disciples game, the two main things you want to consider are how compatible the nations' scale (especially income - Order and Growth, mostly - and Production) and, to a perhaps somewhat lesser extent, bless preferences are. Ulm has a very resource-heavy unit roster and its primary research mages are not affected by drain scales, so it tends to want production scales and doesn't greatly mind dumping magic; Vanheim has a moderately resource-heavy unit roster, but its Van sacreds are extremely gold-heavy and good enough to design a strategy around, and its most cost-efficient research mage is both expensive and strongly affected by Magic/Drain scales. Ulm has no sacred units; Vanheim's Vans, despite being capital-only, are good enough to merit a fairly heavy blessing. Ulm's sacred commanders neither want nor merit much more than a light mage bless (e.g. reinvigoration, maybe with some precision or some minor defensive buff thrown in); Vanheim's sacred commanders can become excellent light thugs with the same general kind of blessing that its Vans want, though as mages they can also work with a light mage bless.

A third thing which you might want to consider but which isn't usually going to be that important until later in the game is what each nation's mages can offer to the team, primarily in terms of item-forging and to some degree in terms of rituals. Vanheim's capital-only Dwarven Smiths have most of the same magic paths as Ulm's Master/Priest Smiths (E2+1.1FAED for the Dwarven Smiths, E2F1H1 for the Priest Smiths, and E2F1+0.2FAES for the Master Smiths)*, and Ulm doesn't have any other magic to offer. Ulm's Master and Priest Smiths can forge items a bit more cheaply due to their forge bonus ability (-2 gems to cost of any items), but Dwarven Smiths can forge higher-level items due to their master smith ability (+1 effective path level for item-forging purposes) and low-level magic items are fairly cheap anyways (not, mind you, that the ability to get Owl Quills and Lightless Lanterns for one gem or Fire Brands and Shields of Gleaming Gold for 6 is nothing).

I wouldn't say that Ulm and Vanheim are completely incompatible, but they're also not extremely compatible.

*F = Fire, A = Air, W = Water, E = Earth, S = aStral, N = Nature, D = Death, B = Blood. 1.1FAED is some combination of randoms which averages out to 1.1 levels chosen from Fire, Air, Earth, and Death; in the case of Dwarven Smiths, this is 1 100% FAED and one 10% FAED random, but there are some mages with a greater degree of variability in what they get - e.g. Arcoscephale's Mystics could be descibed as S1+2.5FWES, but they're really S1 + 1 FWES @ 100% + 1 F @ 50% + 1 W @ 50% + 1 E @ 50% and so could be anything from S1+1FWES to F1E1W1S1+1FWES.