General Help for a not quite Beginner

[jscott]

I will preface this by saying that I'm not quite a beginner at Dominions. I played Dominions 2 extensively on my roommate's PC during law school (which, depressingly, was over 4 years ago at this point), but I think it might have been just the demo. For whatever reason, I drifted away from the game and now just purchased Dominions 3.

The game has excellent documentation and the tutorial did a good job refreshing my memory on a lot of the game's basics, but it didn't really help me in a couple of ways.

1. The most obvious first question that confronts a new player is what age to play in. For my first few test starts (games where I didn't intend to finish, just to play and get a feel for the unit mix and map types available), I picked the middle age. Is that the best age to start in? Is there a "best age" or just each age offer just a different sort of challenge, but are equally accessible to new players.

2. Designing a god seems heavily dependent on what faction you pick, but I find it hard to believe that there aren't general rules of thumb. The strategy wiki on the game offers a few general hints at what type of Pretender you can create, but doesn't get very specific. Is there a guide somewhere that just generally discusses how to create a balanced Pretender that isn't faction-specific?

3. What is the danger in selecting the option to rename units in the game setup screen? I couldn't figure out why the game recomended that this be turned off.

I have tons of other questions, but I don't really want to bog the thread down since the first two at least are the ones holding me back from getting too involved in a game (that, and I forgot to download any patches after receiving the game).

Thanks.