[Agrajag]

First of all, Turmoil-3,Sloth-3,Death-3,Cold-3,Luck-3,Magic-3 is pretty much a must with AE.
Especially early on, they have quite bad research, so you need magic to compensate, and since you take Turmoil-3, you might as well capitalize on it with Luck-3, the lucky +Gold events are much more valuable to AE since you have and need much less money.
You should also take a very high dominion score, since your priests can Preach, and its harder to get temples going because of money problems. Also, your Reanimations and freespawns are affected by dominion, so increasing dominion will also help your military strength.
And since dominion is important, you are going to have trouble finding provinces that aren't drained completely because of your dominion, I usually don't even bother with pillaging and taxation because there's hardly anyone left to tax or pillage by the time I get a province. Though obviously if you get a chance, do it.
What I usually do (this is only good for SP) is get some earth on my pretender, atleast 5, though 6 is much better, and then I use this earth to get the earth-gem-giving global. With this global active you can easily afford a Forge of The Ancients in a few turns, and then you can both use your Dusk Elder's randoms well, as well as forge that alchemy stone for maximum benefits from alchemizing all that earth into gold to fund your temples and fortifications.
And just a small tip, remember that what kind of freespawns you get is influenced by temples and fortifications.