(Everything here was written as I took my turns, except this. And, well, everything else inside parentheses. I'll do this to correct things that past-me said, and provide a bit more input from Turn 21-me.)
Turn 1:
Here's my starting location.
I like this. Quite a bit. I've got a couple directions I can expand, good resources near my capital, and really only three directions of land to worry about.
(True, but I really needed to look at the stuff around me more closely. I'll realize this later.)
My starting army is 15 Marv BCs and 15 Javelineers. I plan to get these guys killed off ASAP. First, though, I'm going to turn my starting commander into a prophet, and dispatch my scout to, well, scout.
This is my recruit screen, which you might recognize from my second post. Right now, I have plenty of gold, and not nearly enough resources. I grab an Eponi Chieftain for a leader (since 40 guys just isn't enough), and load up on Carnute BCs and Slingers. Cheap, effective, and enough of them to make up for my second-turn losses.
I've spent my resources and used my commander slot for the turn, and I still have 180 gold. Now, I want to expand FAST, so I take this chance to check the Mercenaries screen. The Archers in White, 20 Amazons and a Pegasus Rider, are up for bid, so I put 172 gold down on them. I only needed to spend 100, but the extra gold gives me a really good chance of getting the mercs. If I do, it'll speed my expansion nicely, so I change my recruitment to a mess of BCs (meat shields for the Amazons), and end my turn.
(Both parts of this ended up being good decisions, BTW. Archers + Barechests = effective expansion.)