Musings on getting the most out of the early game
The thing that sets the expanding phase of Dominions apart from the rest is that it changes relatively little from game to game. Once you are warring with other players, there are so many possible strategies they might use, each situation is more or less unique. But when encountering only indies, it is actually possible to optimize it universally to a large degree.
While a Ghost King with full buffs may be able to walk through almost any independent provinces he wants, expanding with national troops you need to take more care in selecting your targets. It is almost never a good idea to attack on turn one. Instead, raise taxes and patrol with your starting army* and wait for turn two when scout reports about surrounding provinces come in. As a general rule, farm lands and lands with higher population are better defended by independents. Often you will want to pick the weakest (through possibly poorest) province for you starting army to take. If possible, plan for your army to circle your capital in such a way as they save the strongest province for last. This way, you can instantly ferry troops from your capital to your expanding army simply by sending a commander at the capital with the newly built troops to attack the same provinces as your original army. Additionally, put a very high priority on bidding for mercenaries whenever possible, they can double or more your rate of expanding. Of course circling the capital is many times not possible, and even when it is you may still want to save provinces containing heavy cavalry for your pretender or larger army to take to avoid unnecessary losses. A quick guide to the toughness of independents:
Easy: Tribal Archers, Tribal warriors; Militia, Archers, Light infantry; Woodsman (but avoid taking them with your pretender, a druid might get lucky casting sleep); Ghouls, Souless (bring a priest); Tribal Cavalry; Shamblers (only underwater)
Medium: Heavy infantry; Crossbows; Ichtyids and Ichtyid Warriors; Raptors; Tritons (underwater only, don't use your pretender without full resistance to poison); Barbarians (can be very difficult if you have no ranged troops and are unlucky with their morale not breaking); Slingers (if there are slingers that means there are wizards, you may want to have a scout set to retreat attack the province first to see what magic paths they have); Kraken, Sea Trolls (underwater only)
Difficult: Knights, Longbows; Heavy Cavalry; Triton Troopers (underwater only, don't use your pretender without full resistance to poison); Amazons; Dark Vines; Lizard warriors (similar to barbarians, also don't use your pretender or a shamen will curse it)
Very Difficult: Amber Clan Tritons; Unique Independents (great mother, lamias, paladins, etc.); Devils (this means a commander in the province has a soul contract and will continue to receive an extra devil every turn, often the only way to take the province is using assassins first)
Once you take a province, it usually has at least 5-10 unrest points for being the site of a battle. Often it is a good idea to take down taxes a couple of points for a few turns to get rid of the unrest, it will play off long term.
One tactic you should also keep in mind when expanding, and really for the whole game, is archer decoying. It is the practice of putting a small squad set to hold and attack (or even a single troop) slightly ahead and to the side of the rest of your army. Until those troops route or die, they should draw the fire of enemy ranged troops (mages are a bit smarter, they will aim for big clumps of troops). Some players consider this tactic cheesy as it is in fact exploiting the targeting AI, but you should be aware that in any given game many players are probably using it. Note that this is mostly of value only vs. AI nations and indies, since players that are aware of it may set their archers to something besides fire closest.
When you have your expansion rolling, normally you start looking at site searching. In general it is best to avoid manual searching in favor of long range site search spells like gnome lore. Of course there are many exceptions, it is very difficult research and it takes to long to get search spells, you have a pretender or mage with many different paths, or you lack the appropriate gem income to cast the spell. However by the time you are finished clearing independents, you should be doing almost all of your searching by spells. One search spell you should use very sparingly is achasic record, it looks very appealing but you can get almost the same effect for much fewer gems if you are thorough. Something else to keep in mind when searching is the terrain type. Farm provinces have the least sites, plains and ocean have more, mountains, forests and wastes have the most. Also certain types of sites are more common on certain terrain types, nature in forests, earth in mountains, water in mountains and forests, astral in plains, fire in wastes, air in mountains and wastes. Blood sites are rare in any terrain type, and the most common type (brigand lair) is mostly useless. Usually it is only worth searching for blood sites only if the unrest is increasing in a province for no reason you can see. Since holy sites are somewhat rare and cannot be remote searched, they often get ignored. But if you have priests with nothing better to do, don't hesitate to send them searching promising provinces. Unholy is even more difficult to search for, you have to make the tough choice between reanimating or the chance you might find a site.
*This provides an important jump-start for expanding, though you will eventually pay for it in reduced income from population lost. Exactly what level to set taxes depends on what nation you are playing. Nations that start with many units, fast units, flying units, or units with a patrol bonus all have an edge in patrolling, thus in how high they can go. On one end of the spectrum you have Abysia or Ulm that may only be able to manage 130%, on the other end Mackaka or Caelum which can usually do the full 200%.
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