Please point me in the right direction, help me get started!

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Wauthan:
Missile weapons ignore defence. Crossbows also ignore protection. Never let your pretender lead the charge and place it on a flank or further back in the army placement screen.

To clarify:

All missiles ignore defense... but they do not ignore shield defense. Shields (especially defense 4 tower shields) help quite a bit against projectiles.

Crossbows halve protection... so even a protection 18 dragon will usually be hurt by crossbows.

Regeneration cuts affliction risk to 10% of normal - otherwise the risk is (damage/max HP).

All commanders, except immortals in friendly dominion or berserkers, rout if all underlings rout. So either send in a supercombattant with a strong army, or all alone, but not with a couple weak bodyguards.

-Cherry

[Taqwus]

Balance is very important. Don't just create *one* main army and run amok with that, for instance; if you concentrate your strength too much in one place, it will be difficult to respond to the inevitable incursions, and you're vulnerable to army-bLasting attacks. Expansion and defense must be balanced; so should magic and mundane, and the balance points will depend on the circumstances.
If you want to play with magic, for instance, try a large map with common magic sites to give the time, breathing room and magical resources to build a research machine. Focusing too much on research on a small map is a fairly simple way to die, while neglecting magic on a huge map is asking for trouble.
Remember the turn order. Magic and magically-caused battles take place before normal movement. So do assassinations. In addition, movement in friendly territory takes place before attacks, so a Last-minute reinforcement is possible *if* the reinforcing army is still in shape to move, e.g. did not lose its commanders during the magic or assassination phases.

[Tex Pete]

Thanks for all the tips. I went with the Wyrm Pythium first. It definately allowed me to conquer more provinces than I am used to, but I run short on cash. Basically I used my Wyrm pretender to clean up some provinces, but usually I accidentally get in him trouble like Last game he attacked some souless and undead which swarmed him and killed him. Also I have trouble building up my army. I am usually spending alot of gold on mercenaries or commanders. I might try again today with something different.