I know the feeling!
It's been a while since I played Dominions 1, so I went in pretty fresh.
Anyway, try C'tis with an earth mother. Make her a spear before using her in combat. increases survivability a lot without stalling you. Remember to order her(at the "t" menu where you assign troops to commanders) to attack nearest or she'll spend the fight throwing rocks at the opponent.
As for mundane troops - Build mostly Elite warriors with some swamp guards to put in front to absorb damage(mostly from arrows. you have to set up a formation to get this to work right.)
When you find some neutral archers you should build some of them too. Order them to fire at enemy archers - the bane of your fragile swarms.
Magic - Your sauromancers are pretty good from day one casting terror, and if you go for Enchantment level 3 and raise dead they'll be a force to be reckoned with in battle. Evocation is useless for C'tis, Alteration and Blood magic nearly so. The others can be nice in some circumstances. Consider high magic scale if you want to use casters to their full potential. Neutral mages might change some of this slightly, but your national magic is the only one you can really rely on - you've got gems for it from the very start, you can easily search sites for it, and you can access it anywhere you want. When picking pretender magic, remember that his time is precious(unless he is a total wimp. In which case I wash my hands of it all
) You really don't want him to run around site searching. If you take something your nation does not have then whatever you have planned should not depend on more gems than you can easily get through alchemy.
Oh, and don't forget to hire mercenaries. They're worth the cost when you're up against tough opposition. Remember to put them in front
Disclaimer for style of play, having written this in light of the demo for the most part etc.
Oh, and have fun
[ October 28, 2003, 04:38: Message edited by: mr.white ]