Must have: A sword on your sovereign, found in some goody hut or bought.
Hire Janusk.
Build just one city. Others aren't needed to get started.
Build a workshop, a merchant, a mundane and arcane lab. It will take time.
Research military (name depends on whether you picked empire or kingdom). You should be able to buy some weapon when you have amassed enough gold.
With one weapon and some limited armor, your sovereign can take out most early indies and level up. Get some essence.
Spell research: If you can research summon fire giant (or earth), so that. Otherwise, pick the increase level option.
Once you have researched a fire giant. Summon it. Go with him and your sovereign and kill everything that moves.
Tech-wise: Research some weapons, then squads. Build a squad or two. Send them in a forest and have them hun tspiders/wolves and make a lot of money.
At this point, you can build more cities. In order to get more gold from the cities, research trade and build caravans, send them between your cities for more gold.
If you find some decent heroes, imbue them, level them up so they have enough essece, make them cast a fire giant too.
Keep researching military techs only. Squads, then whatever-the-name... Build armies with 8 or 12-man units, with the best weapon you can find. You may even pay for some armor, but that's mostly optional. Send your army against nearest ai. They should have many more units than you, but not in squads, and they'll be easy to dispatch on the tactical map. Just remember to attack the cities first, and the enemy channeler when he's standing outside your new city in your borders so you can kill him.
This should more or less work well enough to get rid of at least one enemy. Then you can look at other techs to complement what you've got. You may also dabble with tactical spells, but the spell system should be redone so no point going too deep this way.
