Mandragoran's advice is excellent and will be very helpful to you. In addition, I have found that Murteas's magic mod is very helpful as it gives your sovereign a decent weapon and a ranged attack which can whittle down those early monsters. Also when your first settlement levels up, take the choice of a random guardian unit which you can take with you to absorb some of the damage while you cast magic arrow. Murteas's mod also has a guardian unit spell that you can cast on your settlement which cannot leave the city but provides decent early defense for your first settlement. You will find the early game much easier with the above suggestions.

Thanks guy, I am going to give it a try and I will let you know if it goes any better.

Sethai has a good idea.  I think if we were given the necessary techs that everyone needs, then people can start to make the strategic choices between teching between the different trees.  How to implement this (as in, which techs are necessary) would be the problem.

Not to derail the thread though, I too have issues in early game, because I prefer to get my Sovereign and everyone out exploring for the best spot to land a city, and don't want to build club wielding troops that will soon be outmatched.  So then I usually get my Sovereign to buy the best level 1 armour and weapons (the +5 spear I think, and all the armour), and with his high charisma boost, help level the city by building lots of huts and studies to help me quickly go through the trees and get the necessary techs such as those higher level weapons.  I like the choice to get a monster to guard your city upon leveling your city, but I usually have my first city specialized in tech research, and then have future cities get monsters if the cities are just to grab resources and doesn't have arcane or gold nearby.

I think a cross-tree dependency might work wonders, i.e. a player can't rush all armor techs without requirements in other trees. Just an opinion.

@Sethai - great write up. As someone who's been tinkering with the game since Sep '10 I agree how it flips a complete 180 degrees once you get it nailed down... kind of like Algebra.

[Edit] For example, one could rush magic tree and get magical armor and weapons without researching normal armor and swords. Intuitively this makes no sense - how can you make a sword, imbue it with magic, and NOT know how to make a normal sword? It would take some thought and balance to make this work but I think it would be better than what we have today.

Me too.

Best regards,
Steven.

exactly; you're not making the trees more balanced, you're just making it even more convoluted and frustrating for people to get what they want. forcing me to go through a load of diplomacy techs i don't want just so i can do those basic things i was talking about (like defend my settlements from bandits, or pay for stuff) is not fun.

you'd do better by just

- giving people the "essential" techs in the first place

- forcing people to research essential stuff like equipment, irrigation, and groups before other techs in their trees so that at least new players and the AI will be able to keep up with someone who knows what they're doing

- spreading out the benefits of the essential stuff a bit more thinly. so add stuff like chain mail between leather and light plate, or add more gradual stages to the housing techs (ie, increase by 50% each generation instead of doubling), and stop hiding them behind unrelated useless techs. that way if i hit my housing limit across the entire empire i can quickly get the next housing type with my next tech, instead of having to power through a load of unrelated techs to get something that ultimately ends up being more powerful than i actually need. this is starting to happen with the change to 4 men as the basic unit size (ie, subsequent size increases are then smaller as a % of the base).

- or simply acknowledgeing that not all techs can be created equal and allow me to research catapults in 3 turns, instead of wasting 20 that would be much better spent getting archery.

If there is someone out there that can help that would be great. I just got this game and i played it about 2 and half hours and then my player got hurt to the point that he went back to my kingdom. after the 5 turns that it said it would be till he would be better i cannot get just him out of the town . i can get everone that i have in the town in one group out but not just him by himself.

If there is anyone that can help please let me know.

Todd

Rather than making a new post, I’d thought I bring this one back to the original intent. I seem to have trouble at the very very beginning.  The advice in here is good and once I get past a certain level I do well, but the first 20 seasons seem to be really dangerous.  

My very begining strategy is to collect the goodies, research warfare (unless I see a library, at which point I do quests to build a library).  Most of my people, including heroes and myself are very weak. If I run into a single creature I can barely beat it. If it’s a group I am doomed. I try to explore as much as possible to find the resources. On a side note, I feel that much of this game is based on your luck with resources.  The lack of some resources can kill you. Materials in the beginning, gold throughout, crystals in the end. Etc…

I build some peons and some pioneers to get those resource rich areas first. Should I be pumping out pioneers and just city spam, building small resources in each, or is that sustainable? 

Right about the time when I have 3 or 4 cities out, that’s when I seem to hit the real dangerous time.  I generally run into other players and the wandering monsters group up.  My tech only allows me to have padded armor and good weapons, but don’t have groups of 4 yet.  At this point either a wandering group attacks a city, where I only have 1 or 2 single defenders (can’t afford to have more in each one). While at the same time the computer AI rushes the other resources. So I get caught between defending what I have and city rushing the resources. Never can get the tech or the army high enough to do both (pioneers often get killed by bears or wolves on the way).  I dabble in getting roads to speed up re-enforcement, but only half works out with all the wondering mobs (think this is because I am spread out to far to get resources first).

Any other tips in the very beginning.  Should I spam and stay close or rush resources.

(I apologize for the long post, but, I wanted to share my knowledge, and I can be wordy sometimes...)

I highly suggest starting with a custom faction and a custom ruler with these traits:

Faction: take the bonuses that give you the following lvl 1 techs CIVICS, EXPLORATION, TRADING, TRAINING (or the equivalent for empire) and take the HP troop bonus.

Leader:  Green Thumb for 2 food, Brilliant for 1 Tech, Adventurer and Tracker for 2 extra movement, hardy for extra HP.

the 2 food lets you build a hut right from start to take advantage of early city growth (otherwise the only building you can make is the beacon and extra prestige does not really help when you can only have 10 people in the city to start).  the 1 tech lets you start researching right from the first turn.  otherwise, you have to waste all those turns building the beacon, some huts and the farm, and wait for the study to be build before you can start research.

so starting with 4 techs as a custom faction and 1 tech per turn on your leader you will have 5-6 techs before you even build your first study.

as a build order I use the following:  Hut, Workshop, Hut, Workshop, Beacon, Farm.

your first city will have a base prestige of 1 plus any CHA bonus you leader has and a max of 10 people.  this means you have 10 or less turns before your city is full and you lose the prestige (because you can't gain more people).  the first hut gives you 25 more people and takes 5 turns.  you will need materials eventually to do everything, so workshop is next.  because your city has a prestige of 1 and the hut takes 5 turns you will have 5 people ready to work in the workshop when the hut is done (unless you build a peasant for defense).  we build a second hut because 2 huts is minimum to get to city level 3 (when all the interesting stuff starts to happen) and we sill have 1 food left over from the leader bonus.  we build another workshop because we have 5 more people ready, then the beacon and then farm.  by the time the farm is done you can customize your build order depending on your situation and techs.  This build order should give you a decent head start over your opponents.

as far as troops.  I start with Caravans (because I start with the trading tech).  Caravans have 2 movement, are not hindered by national boarders, can make roads with new cities and REQUIRE NO MATERIALS OR PEOPLE TO BUILD and only take 3 turns to make.  start making caravans from turn 1.  use them to explore.  what if it gets ganked?  so what?  what did you lose?  nothing!  but, you should have gained some insight about where to build your next settlement.  you will be surprised just how far a lone caravan can get in a new game (before people start research adventure techs).  I like to build at least 1 peasant for defense in my capital when I have the people and materials.  I build pioneers when I can but, they are expensive when it comes to materials.

for new settlements, I always build at least 2 huts minimum (food permitting) because 2 is minimum for level 3 city.

I also specialize my cities.  my capital is always a materials and gold specialist.  I never build a study in my capital.  I choose the gildar bonus for city level ups on my capital.  after people, gold and materials are the basis of your economy.  with the Great Mill, my capital is the only city I ever need to build workshops in.  all other cities either specialize in food or tech or arcane (depending on the types of resources I find).  Sometimes I skip arcane entirely if I don't want to mess with magic at all.

as far as research goes I always follow the same early path before I diverge depending on the situation (this is based on Kingdom, I have not played Empire yet):

Early Research Begins:

EQUIPMENT - for spears and padded armor, now your leader can go out without fear of death in every battle and you have good defenders, for a while, in your city

HARVESTING-Granary, Gold Mines, Metal Mines and as a prerequisite later
UNIT QUARTERS-Barracks, reduce troop training times, very handy
PRODUCTION-Great Mill, needs harvesting, doubles material production in the city it is built, I love this thing.
CITY DEFENSE-Hedge Wall, nice defense bonus and looks cool (auto upgrades to a fort later) and requires no people.
CONSTRUCTION-Construction Yard    (this is optional if you are on a large map, for small maps I would skip this). it basically reduces the build time of most buildings by 1-2 turns.  over a long map this adds up a lot and can keep you ahead of the AI all game.

Tech Rush Begins:  This is where I rush to get libraries and schools which will boost your tech production by quite a bit and pretty much seal your place on top of the other factions when it comes to research.

ADMINISTRATION -Town Hall   (reduces maintenance)
ECONOMICS-Houses    (all those level 3 cities you have will auto upgrade to houses, very nice, instant pop cap increase)
EDUCATION-Schools   (+25% production on tech research)
HOUSING-Villas    (level 4 cities auto upgrade houses to villas, useful on large maps, but required for...)
LITERACY-Library  (all level 3 cities auto upgrade every study to a library.  in a single turn you will double your tech research)

When you get to 100 tech research stop building libraries and studies.  100 tech per turn should be more than enough to get you through any kind of game of any length or size and stay ahead of all other factions.  you will be getting new techs about every 5-10 turns at this point, have fun.  if you are going for conquest you will get more tech points from conquered studys and libraries in new cities.  magic, adventure and diplomacy are actually quite small tech trees compared to war so you won't need as much tech.  you already have most of the civ tree already.

at this point you can do whatever you want depending on the winning condition you are going for.  I suggest you specialize. you may want some more points in weapons and armor for better troops and you may need some more prestige for your expanding empire (hospitality).  if you find that you are running low on resources then research the adventure line that opens them up The LOST BOUNTY, LOST MAPS, RARE RESOURCES.  be warned that these will have more benefit when you have more area under your control, use them wisely!  if you really need food then research Guilds, Farming Guilds and Superior Farming for gardens and irrigation, otherwise this is optional if the resource gods are smiling on you.

good question.  I have only ever played version 1.11 so I don't know what the differences are to point them out ahead of time.  yes, people provide taxes at a flat 10% rate.  so every 10 people will give +1 gildar per turn.  more people, more income!

also, keep in mind that my tips are just how I play.  I am sure there are other ways and they are probably more efficient.  but, I do know that my way works.  keep asking questions, it helps others too, I am sure.

**POSSIBLE SPOILERS**

I believe that at the point you get the second boat you head a little bit south first, then west along the coast and then North.  you need to backtrack to all the previous kingdoms and gain support from them in order to defeat the final encounter.  also, you will need a second party to head north and then west by land (maybe that is what your question is about).  eventually you should find a large gate in a big desert along the south cliff face with lots of darklings and golems walking around.  the gate should have a message that says it is locked and must be opened from the other side.  thats where your boats come in.  they dock on the shore to the west and open the gate from the inside.  then your forces combine and you have your final encounter.