I'm finding that monsters give much more experience than the races do. I had not noticed before, but in my last game I had to defend like crazy against almost all the other races. I would have epic battle after epic battle and get maybe 10 xp. I could then fight an ogre or something similar, beat it or them easily, and get 35-50 xp. Against races I just didn't think I was getting the reward (xp) for the risk. Maybe xp is only based on level if so, maybe it should also be based on the armor, weapons, and amount of hp. Fighting plate mail early can be tough.
I was playing a huge map on hard/hard.
I'm liking everything else. Great game!