Yeah, didn't realize how close that server was to arma, I made a nether mage for the hell of it, but we'll see.
That adivice is better for starting mid round, if you start at the beginning you can ignore research a bit, but you have to be able to rush people effectively, and grow without getting knocked down again (so you do need some research, because barracks troops utterly suck), or play as a hoarder to geld up like crazy and hope to buy some powerful heros to boost your later start.
I'm no expert really, I kinda do what's fun for me, but typically in those first 120 turns you can explore to ~1500+ and put in your 299 or 399 workshops 500+ guilds (I go for closer to 1k) and the rest into some more nodes and towns/farms.
Once you have your 200 fresh turns you can do alot of things, but realize that you cannot target the same mage over and over (other than in arma) as once they lose 30% of their np they enter protected status.
You do have to balance your mana and geld economies to support whatever troops you are running, and you need usually around 10k total troops to acheive max gains in sieges. Though if you're just trying to kill someone you should probably use less, but that's more of an advanced topic anyway
Check your mail over there, assuming you are omnii