[SurvivalistMerc]

japinard,

I had that problem at first, too. You need to aggressively expand early on. Try to play the Aran map with 5 or so other nations. That will give you some room to expand before immediately encountering other nations.

The reason I didn't do well at first was that I was recruiting the wrong units. Tell us please what nation you are playing and what your general strategy is. If you're trying to initially learn with a weak race, that may be a big part of the problem. I can recommend something like Ulm, Pythium, or Arco to get started.

Try that and let us know where you falter. We need to have some idea of what you are doing to give recommendations. But a common mistake is concentrating on weak, low-morale units or perhaps not reasearching sufficiently. I'm far from an expert on this game.