Yes, she is by far the worst. Not impossible to play, but hard.  If you want to see how I play her on challenging, here is a play through.

A basic strategy that makes the game run a little easier is to ensure that you have enough cities to compete. ctrl - N is also another option that you may or maynot use. For example if you have a poor starting location this could lead to difficulties the rest of the game for which you may not be prepared.

There are always cheats you could try. Till you figure out what you are doing wrong, for example you can watch what the AI is doing to be so successful.

Check the play through, serious.  The link's in the above post.  I cannot give you a full strategy here, but you should be doing all of these at least until you learn how to roll your own strategies:

1. Your first city should have solid materials, so it can produce, and solid essence so that you can enchant it.

2. Use every essence slot for city enchantments.  Porcupine has Inspiration (A MUST - doubles your early research) and Meditation(combat mana)   If your first hero has "Earth", use "Enchanted Hammers" instead of Meditation.

3. Immediately research civic (Growth bonus, unrest building, and rushing) and reduce taxes (the city makes nothing anyway, but taxes create unrest)

4. If your first city has a forest, start a logging camp. If not, and you did not get two essence slots, build a scrying pool. If neither, start a tower of dominion.

5. Use your two heroes (P. and whoever) to explore two directions.   Do not worry yet about fighting, get the lay of the land.

6. Once you have the tower, build a pioneer, and settle the spots found by your hero, WHILE MAKING SURE THERE ARE NO BIG BEASTS around.  Anything you do not think you can kill with two heroes and a militia is a BB.

7. Kill the easy monsters, loot the free goodies, GET the libraries, decide how your heroes will grow. Build a few militias if you need them.

8. Researched civic, restoration, knowledge, and administration.  Build logging camps, workshops, studies, and unrest buildings in your cities.  Remember to cast enchantments, and build scrying pools when you can.  ONCE you have the unrest buildings, start building gold buildings, and MAYBE raise your taxes. (I do not, but I get a lot of cash from loot, because I'm quite good at tactical combat)

9. AFTER you have researched civic, knowledge, administration and restoration, get basic leather clad spearmen by researching training and leatherworking.

10. Build as many spearmen as you can afford. Kill stuff to support them.  Use haste and slow in hard fights, but not unless you need to.  Retreat your wounded units.

.... This is too long already. Read my playthroughs.

And it is much easier if, instead of Procipinee, you use a overpowered custom sovereign to learn the game with.

Best one, in my opinion (stealth is missing, despite being very powerful, but if you play with stealth, you are learning bad habits and missing 2/3 of the game)

Race:  Krax blood, Empire, enchanters, scouts, defensive, lucky, light plate +vulnerable to magic as a weakness

Sovereign: General, clumsy, brilliant, wealthy, hardy, Death, Water

How to win: fortify your sovereign and troops, research civics and rush with your cash, get Death II and use blindness against big enemies, make your troops good dodgers.

This is a very strong race.  I win more often than I lose on ridiculous with it.  You do not need such a strong race to win on easy, but it will let you learn tricks.

What concerns me about advice like this is that it makes it seem this is the only way to play when there should, at least in theory, be multiple paths to victory even in the very early game.

I agree, there should be at least a "cake walk" level like GC2 had, if SD is unwilling to nerf the AI bonuses on easy.

OT: In the games I've played so far, only once has the AI used magic against me. All other battles were strickly military.

This game really should be called "Fallen Palidin" not FE, because magic is underpowered and/or rarely used.

I didn't see novice as a difficulty choice. I don't even see "beginner" I'll look again.

Isn't Porcipinee the one that starts with that item that lets you cast buffs on her and they cost no upkeep? 

If that is true then I found it easy to play with her. Early game you buff her like crazy, give her some weapons and armor and fight in melee. Once she becomes a competent spellcaster you switch to high initiative and fireball with her familiar casting haste on her. You also get to use that wolf summon from early on and get to summon elementals later. If you get lucky and get another caster champion, AI players cannot do much against you later. You got lots of mana and your spells oneshot most armies.

Personally, I give the crown to the first hero I meet, because chances are, s/he will be a better melee fighter that Procipinee.  Procipinee can provide battlefield spell support (Haste, arrow shield, slow).  You have to remember to let Procipinee get an army and start gathering xpt on her own at some point, for the prestige growth bonus.

Clarification: in order to get fireball, you have to either use 'steal spirit' on a fire mage (evil and innefficient) or research spellbooks in the magic tech tree, and buy a fire tome for Procipinee to read.

Couldn't agree more. Those maintenance-free slaves are amazing fodder AND a great way to generate mana with Cull the Weak. Oh, and those cheap-cheap stealthy Slave Scouts == opening the map faster than anyone else.