What monster frequency are you playing? What difficulty? There are some more advanced ways of dealing with large monsters. I suggest getting the early warfare techs and building enough spearmen to handle larger beasts. You may be better off playing on a faster tech pace too. It helps against monsters.

I think what the original post is trying to say is, starting out is rather hard for newer players no matter the difficulty, because you will run into some rather difficult monsters.
It becomes especially hard without building a custom sovereign, since the premade ones are rather poor in skill...
Also researching warfare technology to beat a creature within the first 8 tiles, you cannot research anything but spears that have any effect, and thats a kind of rubbish start IMO if you NEED to build spearmen first off, as I can read we are talking about the first 10 turns of the game..

I really like the "Weak" "Moderate" "Strong" subtypes in the game, the game should support this more to help newer players know danger when it stares at them, also it should have more types, especially for weaker monsters to actually have an effect the first 50 turns of the game

To the original post, You need any pointers as to what could help you get a good start?

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I would like a bit stronger starting monsters. The bandits, mites and darklings should be slightly stronger. Now its just boring to kill em.

While I agree there should be more difficult monsters, the STARTING AREA should be a walk in the park, so you cannot lose just to too strong monsters in the starting area, and so to give more room for sovereigns that are less powerful on turn 1-10.

I do still think the MAP EDITOR should have a BIG redo, to make each map much more like a "Scenario", and less random.
I still hope for larger maps, so there are more room for proper map design.
One could put in rules to make the starting area simple, for newer players, and add a layer of medium difficulty around that, after the medium difficulty layer, it should be a random of medium to hard difficulty layers until you meet other players...

It is not because I need a walk in the park, thats just how games are usually set up, and while breaking the "usual" on some points, it is bad habit to make a game way to hard for newcomers, there could be options before map generation to generate hard starting locations.

But that is getting abit offtopic.

PS. Mites needs a slight buff, they're silly, and Pioneers can almost kill them!!!... well ok not pioneers they cant attack, but you get the idea.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I play with Dense monster (or what ever the max is) and I love the fact that I'm surroned my monsters however I wish they had an aggressive setting option. Because they are still not aggressive enough for my tasted. I still steam Roll them. With my Sov and one hero or unit

monsters are attacking our cities a little too much... they need to tone that down just a tiny bit

Kongdej, I would love any tips anyone can give me.

To reiterate my original post:

Difficulty: Easy or Normal.

Monster frequency: Moderate (default).

I WANT to be able to fight monsters, to build up my custom sovereign and give experience to any units that can accompany the sovereign.

What I find unplayable is monsters that are FAR stronger than I am within 5 to 10 squares of my starting position.
Not just one game, but the last dozen times I've restarted.
AND they follow me until they catch me, at which point my sovereign is out of play for the next 10 turns or so.

If I research nothing but combat techs from the start it takes me around 30 to 40 turns to research Leatherworking.
Then it takes another roughly 20 turns to research Weaponry.
(Or vice versa if I do it in reverse order.)
Those are the absolute minimum techs to produce anything approaching survivable troops.

Either way, it's about 30 turns too late to help me with the starting monsters.
And it means that I'm 50+ turns into the game before I dare send out even one Pioneer.

I do need to try the accelerated tech pace; it seems likely to be the only thing to make a difference.

Tancred:

Are you running custom sovereigns? cause they can help alot on early game stuff (and never ever ever pick a bow for a custom sovereign, they are useless)

Research the warfare research for spears quickly, they are the first decent piece of weapon that does not cost metal, and gives moderate damage.

Build a spear militia and keep that in your base city, as for defense, also get a spear militia to tag team with your main hero.

The level 1 Life spell "Regenration" works Extremely well with fast weapons and the air spell "Haste", try comboing water and air magic for haste + slow.

Cast inspiration on your first city on turn 1, doubles your research points.

Never run a sovereign without +2 mana per turn Enchanting stuff is key to an easy game.

Hope these pointers help, can give you a vid about how I start out HARD games...
Although I do still make mistakes, and depending on mood sometimes I do war with everything and rampage through the country, losing troops left and right

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I totally agree.

This idea could be extended to some monsters/minor fractions defending special areas or improvements, so that you can use them/settle there/build outposts there/pass their territory only if you killed the monsters surrounding/guarding/owning that area or if you did them a favor/payed them, or acting along with their interests or convinced them any way.

I also think that wildlings/darklings/mites need sth more special, I mean they really can nothing besides being killed...

I know that I can kill bandidts and wolfes, but I have to play passably well to do this, when fighting darklings or wildlings (without shamans) you can turn your brain off. This is not the sense of a game.