Newbie help with EA marverni

[Gevaudan]

Howdy all,

I've been reading the forum for the past few hours and am ready now to post!

I'm a long time strategy gamer who is completely new to dominions; 3 is my first game.

I'm currently trying to win as EA Maverni on the map Aran against 5 Impossible AI's set randomly. I want to achieve this victory at default map settings with a rainbow commander (usually 2/2/2/S3/E3/2/N5/2). I've tried both the arch druid and the master druid.

The computer players seem more than willing to focus on me aggressively, which usually leads to me having to face off 300-600 unit armies on multiple fronts. I loose these battles badly.

Upon reading threads, I will now be using blade wind spell. Mostly, I have been trying to cast mother oak and building a massive gem supply to purchase summons. I've been playing a heavy research strategy. I tend to expand with nationals through neutrals.

specific questions:
1.) what's the general deal with the marverni? I'm having trouble getting a feel for their nation specific strategies. their units seem expensive and weak in the sense that they die often. They don't have any obvious ones to me like LA Ermor undead or Van rush. What are their general whomp approaches?
2.) I'm having trouble balancing max research and node searching. finding nodes with the rainbow is awesome, but he's also a super researcher. advice?
3.) Its a small map and I'm often pinched between 3 comps. general advice for escaping attrition doom?
4.) this SC/thug thing has me puzzled. Why are low hp death creatures so good and huge hp other creatures not as good? I'm looking for a numerical explanation here.
5.) I�m suffering from newbie syndrome badly. I�m not familiar with most of the races, or their unit stats and abilities or the hundreds of spells. How does one ease into this? If the answer is getting pounded repeatedly�I�m achieving that gloriously.
6.) What is wrong with mage AI?! I recently sent a master communer with 8 slaves into a battle with the astral assassination plan: give everyone on the battlefield 1 rank in astral and then duel the comps dead. The mage did not comply�repeatedly. There were 5 enemy mages present. Has anyone ever pulled this off?

Thanks for your help!