[Saxon]

Magic. You have to go with magic. It is where the real power is and it is the way you are going to win. Ulm is the only one of the many races that has limited magic and even it needs to take it into account if it is going to win.

If memory serves, Man has cheap temples, so you might want to explore a dominion based approach. I think they also have nature spells, so explore powering up mages with the thistle mace. Gift of Health is a nice global, which boosts the hit points of all your troops in friendly dominion. Sounds like that would go well with your strategy/style of using lots of regular troops.

I had the same challenges you did when I first started. My problem was that I was treating the game like a regular wargame. I had to change my way of thinking radically and approaching things very differently. It is hard to describe, but let me try. Most games are the real world put onto the computer. This game is a fantasy world, with special laws of physics which you can change. You have to learn a new way to think to handle the new laws of nature.

I can only recommend what worked for me. Pick one nation and read up on it in the forums. Learn how it works and you will learn a lot of mechanics of the game. Try that nation out a few times, don’t be afraid to experiment. The learning curve on this game is very high, but it is worth it.

I would also suggest asking questions on the forums, but I suspect most of the activity is going to be over on Dom 3, now that it has been released.