[Tyrant]

You are in for a great gaming experience nonsence, this is really a great game and it's so big that you have many weeks of fun game exploration ahead! Keep in mind that the game is quite new and even DomII vets do not have it wired.

I'd suggest that you start out with the Middle Era. The indies are very week in the Early Era and the Late Era has lots of peculiarities. Middle will give you better practice against tougher indies without too many "Holy Crap" moments. You might try Man, Caelum or Arco as starting nations. Definatly avoid Blood nations at first.

A few random tidbits of advice

- Try to expand as quickly as you can without taking many casualties. You want to get a good growth curve going, but it's important to build your army up. Recruiting shortbowmen if your country does not have good archers will help here.

-Searching for sites is important, but not urgent. Make sure you get it done, and the sooner the better, but not at the experience of expansion in the early game. It's worth while to search for everything that you can, even if that's a pain in the neck. Most site are levels 1 or 2, btw.

-You want to increase your research every turn until it's at least 200. This is not always possible, but try. Note that there are two nice magic items that create research- Skill Mentor from Death, and Lightless Lantern for Fire. These can help alot if your nation does those kinds of magic.

-Research priority is crucial, but it's hard to make reccomendations because it's dependent on the nation you are playing. Some candidates for early research- Evocation 2 or 3 if you need firepower, Thaumaturgy 2 to get site searching spells, Construction 2,4, or 6 to get power up items, resarch items and/or weapons and armor. Conjuration X to get some particular summons that will help you out.

-Building provence defence is very helpful against the AI.

-You want to build a second fort/temple/lab at the point resources become a limiting factor to your build at your capitol. Beyond that it's hard to generalize.

Far from a comprehensive guide, but i hope that points you in the right direction.