Some things I learned the hard way :
- having an early fast expansion in a line can be desastrous. At the end, your army is weakened by this expansion. If you meet no agressive opponent, everything is fine. But if you meet one, he will take all your new conquered provinces one by one since the PD is often not enough to repel him.
And all the gold you wasted on PD means less gold for buying new soldiers...
- finding a good ally is hard. Trying to convince people to crush the winning guy can be hard too. People are often involved with their own affairs/struggle.
- when the game reachs his mid-part, PD is almost useless since you can see 300+ people army wandering around. Spells unleashed are so powerfull at this time, you can see a 100 PD make only 20 deaths to the attacker's army. The PD can be good though to support any army of yours, especially on chock-point.
- underwater nations are usually a good way to not be rushed in the early turns (especially if you got the chance to be alone underwater). Unfortunately getting on land is usually very hard too. At least for me !
- diversify your troops or you may face a special counter.
- it may be good to not make early research and to make your early military expansion a priority.
- Don't play as Lanka near vfb because he will attack you just to make a good story and for fun !!
