Terrible Player.

[Tolkien]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

What nations have you tried playing?

AFAIK, there is no way to automatically make newly recruited units go somewhere. You can, however, hire batches by 10s by clicking while holding shift.

Elite units do perform much better than cheap units, although whether they are worth the cost in gold or resources is a decision you'll need to make on a unit by unit basis.

Baalz's post on 'How to not lose' is informative on how to make victories more favorable. You might also try skimming some of the guides in the Strategy index for ideas.

Site searching may only turn up a site every 7th or 8th time. That's ok, just keep at it. Manual searching can work, but remotes save mage time and always find a site in that path if its present. To duplicate this by wandering around and searching you generally want 4 in the path of interest (although sometimes you can get away with less, depending on terrain - see the strategy index second post first section - there's a link to a useful post there).

Acashics is rarely worth it, except for a few nations (and then used sparingly and carefully). In fact, the only nation for whom acashic gets my approval in any general context at the moment is EA Ermor (because you have *all* the paths except blood, and only have income for 2 of them, one of which is astral).

Wait, you can hire in batches of ten?

Oh for the love of...

[Iry]

I thought I would start simple and stick to a single era. I've played every single EA nation a couple of times and mostly lost. I've noticed I prefer a few bigger units as opposed to numerous smaller units because I dislike losses, but those bigger units tend to come from the Capital and have logistics problems getting to the front line.

I've tried to avoid using numerous commanders because they really clog up my screen, but that seems to be a bad idea. I usually get about 4-5 provinces by the first year and about 9-10 by the second year and maybe one more province each additional year with the computer hammering me all the while. At that point I'd like to sit and do research to try and learn the magic system, but unless I press my military offensive the AI will beat down my defensive forces and I get bored of constantly shuttling reinforcements to the front lines.

I've tried using mages for Skeli-spam a couple of times, but once I've got about 20 I've consumed almost all of my income with upkeep even with Order 3. I don't really know any other spells to spam except maybe Wind Blade, and it still doesn't solve the upkeep problem. I've started to favor Death Magic not because I like the thematics, but because it seems to avoid all my units becoming old and dying of diseases.

Also, I started building a fortress/castle/rampart in every single province I own because it seemed like the right thing to do since it buys me a few turns to prepare a counter offensive incase I almost lose a province.