[thejeff]

For MP play, the most useful thing you can learn in SP is initial expansion. That's the only thing that carries over directly. You can experiment with strategies, but when you try to apply them in MP, you'll see counters the AI would never try.

Experiment with expansion. Try different blesses, mixes of troops, troop positioning, etc. When you can reliably get ~15 provinces in the first year, along with research and at least one castle up, you're probably ready for MP. If you take an awake SC or sink a lot of points into a bless, you should expand faster. You should also have plans for the mid and late game - magic diversification and end game SCs/globals.