I don't think anyone here needs an "excuse" for losing. Expecially in the first games. We're learning, we're having fun. Losing happens (there are a lot of excellent players) and, to steal Dwarf Fortress' motto, losing is fun
I also think subbing wouldn't be the best way to enter MP. Better to try a strategy that gave nice results in SP, see how it fails (it
will fail
) and understand why, make considerations and changes. If you sub, maybe subbing even an experienced player's nation, you'll probably find a strange and creative setup you will not understand what was it supposed to be used for (scales that were giving up much to provide points for something else, magic levels of the pretender set in a specific way to build some boosters or items or cast some key spell...) and it will probably be only frustrating.
BTW Trumanator I'm starting an MA game as soon as Principe ends (probably in late February), which should have mostly newbies
I'll send you a PM when I start it if you're interested.
Here is Principe's page, give a look, the setup of the upcoming game (Principe's sequel) will be more or less the same:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=40824 