Newbie questions

[Zen]

It all depends on what you want and can afford.

The best nation to probably try the "Standard Army" would more than likely be MA Ulm. Play with Order3/Production3 and a Pretender with at least some nature (N3 is a good markerpoint) and probably death (D3) or Astral. Recruit a good mix of units, xbows, heavy infantry, use your Cav (HCav) only for situations that require it, since they are gold heavy.

Make +Supply items for nature, in order to keep your armies in shape.

Recruit indpendents that help diversify your armies: nature mages, death mage, amazonian sacred units (Pegasi, Lizard riders), independant mages.

Make big armies with "Thugs" in order to develop how to equip and identify units that make good thugs. Along with that a few battlemages for support, equipping them with Earthboots to use Bladewind, Battlefield support spells. Ulm is a good nation for this with death and astral because their forgeable items can be equipped on both constructs and undead to make use of their low encumberance values.

Your endgame thugs should probably comprise of Iron Dragons and Golems.

Look for promising provinces for high resource centers in order to churn out the masses of units. Watch out for stagnation with upkeep due to not expanding or waring enough.

These are ways you can play the "Army" game of Dominions.