[jutetrea]

The last 2 pages of the item section of the manual give all the boosting items - invaluable for planning out how to get higher level casting

There are a few posts on the board which detail how to avoid becoming an AI target early, although they'll still just randomly declare war on you sometimes. Its fun when you're playing vs 5 AI and 4 of them are at war with each other and leave you to take them down 1 by 1. Not as fun when all 5 are at war with you (at least early).

The demo limits you to lvl 4 magic I believe, while the AI is unlimited. I'm wondering if using one of the magic cutoff mods (limits to 4 or 6 or 8) may be good to start, as it should limit AI and player to lvl 6 magic say. Might let you become more familiar with the levels/paths and included spells.

Many many players don't finish SP games, frequently they become a chore as micromanagement gets too hefty. Save the game, try another nation/setup and maybe go back to the long game to get to epic stuff later.

Late age has less magic generally, and better troops when compared with early age - might make it easier by limiting some the crazy magic paths available in EA.

The nation descriptions in the manual are great for a first run (most of them), if you follow the guidelines and play for ~20 turns you'll get an ok idea on a nation.

I've had the game for almost a year and still haven't played some nations.

Try a few turns of different combos - good scales + high/low dominion, bad scales + high/low dominion, Heavy dominion + preaching, bless, awake fighting pretender vs. an asleep heavy magic pretender. Even a few turns of the above will give you a good idea of how you like to play.

Most importantly, have fun!