[Graeme Dice]

The starting strategy you use is highly dependant on which nation you pick, what kind of pretender you have chosen, and most especially, what the independents strength setting is. At 3, your starting army should be able to take on just about any province other than the ones with lance-equipped heavy cavalry, Knights, and dark vines. At independents 6, you should be able to take a province on turn two with most nations, and only a very few will have to wait till turn three. This usually only occurs when you get rather unlucky in your choices for starting provinces.

As an example, I'll take Pythium, which has a fairly easy time with most heavy infantry provinces. With Pythium, a workable starting strategy is to pick a very low cost pretender like the oracle, and give it astral 4. Then put your scales at order 3, prod 3, growth 1, magic 2, dominion 7, wizard's tower. You could also have similar setups with the sacred statue, or even the blood fountain if you feel like getting into blood magic later. You'll be relying on your powerful national mages for your magical firepower in this setup, but that's not a problem for Pyhtium, especially with the cheap, fast-building wizard's tower.

In the first turn, I take and put all of my units together in a single squad, then place it as far forward as possible and set them to fire closest. I then put te centurion back as far towards the back as possible and put him on (hold)(hold)(hold)(hold)(hold) stay behind troops. I don't want a lucky crossbow bolt to kill him and rout my initial army.

I then decide whether to purchase a theurg or theurg acolyte. With magic 2, theurg acolytes make excellent magic researchers, so they are a good choice. In a neutral magic dominion, I'd probably pick a theurg. I put the oracle on research, then decide whether I want quickness (alteration 2), lightning bolt(evocation 2) or the site searching spells (thaumaturgy 2) first. Usually I'd go for quickness first, then head straight for orb lightning. It would also work to go for thaumaturgy 4 early to get paralyze, or to go for construction magic and use your very large initial gem income in some manner.

Once I've made this initial choice, I purchase a standard bearer, and as many principes as I can for the turn. Principes have the best morale of the javelin equipped legionairies, have decent protection, and have tower shields to catch independent arrows. I also bid on any mercenaries that might be available.

In turn 2, I look at the surrounding provinces, and try and find one that lists units of types: militia, light infantry, heavy infantry, archers, crossbows. I avoid heavy cavalry and knights until much later, and try and get a province that reports less than 4 enemy units. I send my initial army (with the principes and the standard bearer added into the initial squad) to this province, then purchase new units and move onto the next turn. On higher independents settings I will purchase a few assasins instead of mages in the early turns to use for expanding into provinces. Assasins only have to fight against commanders (and sometimes a bodyguard if they have one), and can thereby remove the leaders from an independent nation. An army with no leaders autorouts, so an assasin can take on fairly difficult provinces in a matter of a few turns.

That's an initial starting strategy that I've used a bit, it works fairly well to get you initial expansion off the ground.