Whoah theres a lot of micro management in this game

[Question]

Just started playing this game and theres surprisingly a lot of micro management. There are no hotkeys for some actions like transferring gems...so you have to spam mouse clicks. You can't set rally points, and worse you can't even give commanders orders to move to more than 1 turn's worth of provinces per turn...a feature that was present in strategy games released 20 years ago(Master of magic IIRC).

I get the impression people dont like using capital only troops for this reason. Its too slow and too much of a micromanagement hell to constantly move troops from the capital to the front lines.

AI in combat seems...extremely primitive. Set mages on "cast spells" and they will spam random level 0 spells...when they could be casting lightning bolts or more. And you can nnly queue like 5 spells, so after 5 spells your mages start casting really random stuff. And i cant find a way to move them up to support the melee guys either (i put them in the back, but when my melee guys charge, they just...stay there...and do nothing useful),

Also tried using iron dragons set to "attack rear most unit" to take out commanders and archers. Instead they would attack the closest unit (usually some charging cavalry) and get tied up there. Uh? That's completely the opposite of what i wanted you to do...

How exactly do you make decent armies? So far ive been mostly using melee guys in 3 large blocks, buffed by spells, because ive noticed that 50+ composite bows cant seem to kill much, and things like javelins and slings are horrible.

Side note : Site searching is god awful. Lets say i want to search 4 different sites in one province. I have to cast 4 different spells to do it, and theres no way to automate it...theres no way to even see which provinces have been searched while casting the spell (province select screen doesnt show any indicators it seems). Also some minor points like how the game doesnt automatically put researchers back on research after casting/forging.

And theres plenty of help text that doesnt tell you anything useful. Can't see the stats of a creature before you summon it for example (and you cant set mages to auto summon turn after turn, its a LOT of work if you want a summoned army).

Problems :

-Low level mages have no way to cast higher level spells? Do i just have to empower them(really expensive)?

-How do you invade under water provinces without natural water breathing? I saw a Rl'yeh city with 1500+ troops once...how the hell?

-How do you make commanders effective in melee combat? If i put them in the middle of a large block, they get stuck behind the mass of trops when it comes time to charge. And they never seem to kill much. Are there any AOE weapons other than the frost/fire brands?

-How do i make an effective god? I tried using a water 9, father of frost god, gave him a frost brand, black steel armor, some buffs...somewhat effective in combat, BUT died easily to the first real AI army encountered. Also i noticed that if i set him to cast quicken self, he would spam cold bolt instead...and if i set him to cast falling frost, he would cast quicken self instead...

-If you spam forts everywhere, do they reduce the resources in your capital or something?

-How do you heal afflictions? Or dismiss troops?

-For research, should i just spam researchers turn after turn?