Strategy & Focus

I usually try to rush to get both Merchant Bazaar and the Great Mill.  Merchant Bazaar goes in my best Town, and the Great Mill goes in my fortress where I will end up producing troops.  This fortress has to have at least two essence so I can add enchantments to my troops.

Then it depends on the game for me.  What character do I have, what resources do I have.  I like out researching my opponents, so a lot of times I will continue to research civilization to try and get the Hosten's Library, the Treasury Vault, and Eroegg's Tower.

A lot of my plans are dictated by my faction/sov and my resources.  

Important things, don't group your Sov and your champions together.  Split them up, search for loot, and pick your fights.  

I usually only have a few conclaves, 1 fortress, and the rest cities.  My first city can be anything, although I tend on fortresses or city for my first one.  I find it useful to have an early and well built fortress as soon as possible, and no other fortress.  With this fortress I train elite troops for garrisons and armies.  

Expand quickly.  Create pioneers and create as many new cities as possible, without building next to a monster you can't fight.   Gather all the loose loot and early quest you can, build a few troops to help your champs and sovs, these troops don't have to be great, I wouldn't even put traits on them.  

Most of the time, I would advise getting the first levels of Civil techs and Warfare techs, along with trading and (warfare, the one that gives axes and hammers, daggers) before researching anything else.  After that  you have to plan based on your resources and faction.  But this will give you the basics of a working cities, and functional armies and militia.  Leather,shield and warhammer  or spear and leather troops will be solid for a long time.  

Plan your sov and champs builds.  Don't level haphazardly.  Avoid summon bonuses for mages, speed, dodge and damage are the best.  When in doubt, concentrate on swords for warrior types, there are always plenty of good swords around.  

My build orders are typically something like this (although it depends on starting location essence and resources):

Altar: pioneer, shard (or logging camp), pioneer

Tarth:  pioneer, pioneer (or logging camp), pioneer

Procipinee:  pioneer, shard (or logging camp), pioneer

Gilden: pioneer, pioneer (or logging camp), pioneer

Resoln:  pioneer, shard (or logging camp), pioneer

Yithril:  pioneer, pioneer (or logging camp), pioneer

Kraxis:  pioneer, shard (or logging camp), pioneer

Magnar:  slave, slave, slave, pioneer, shard (or logging camp), pioneer

I immediately try to maximize production- that means producing buildings which directly increase resource output (ex: logging camps), indirectly increase production (ex: clerics, to reduce unrest), or increase the number of resources themselves (ex: clay pits).  I typically play on Hard difficulty using custom leaders of my own design- I almost always pick the Wealthy trait, because cash-rushing is extremely useful.  My goal is to reduce my build times as much as possible as quickly as possible, so that I can then focus on development and expansion while running a skeleton military, secure in the knowledge that I can rapidly produce troops as necessary in the case of emergency.  

All of my cities turn into Fortresses, with almost no exceptions.  Forts give you a major benefit quickly, compared with the other two options- a border expansion which is useless (just build an outpost or monument if you really need resources) and a science boost which only works if your city is idle (which they should never be until maybe the very late game, at which point the benefit is useless anyway).  I don't care much about what the non-Fort options provide once your city grows to level three, since it takes a long time for that to happen and the Fort benefit is immediate.  Every city in my empire is expected to be capable of producing combat troops, even if they generally won't. 

Early game is purely about exploring for new cities for me - they're rare enough and with a large map and 6 opponents its usually a race.  

I like beastlord so that's my starting army, usually sov, hire first champ, and a critter till i get mana back and then usually 1 more critter.  if it turns out i have funds/mana to pick up more I will.

If not beastlord its a couple troops then mostly production, unrest, food.

spam pioneers as much as possible with direct production and indirect production taken care of.

I agree, i only usually go with 1 fort per "front", a few conclaves and the rest "towns".  It is nice late game to have the +10% hp to all troops (if it even works, or stacks...) from towns, strikeforce from fortress - and i can't remember what conclave gets.

After my initial build infrastructure is going I add a second roving group for loot/exploration - rushing pioneers to any cities I find.  There is level of "keeping up with the joneses" as well, since you don't want to fall too far behind in the arms race and get bullied.

Mobility is my favorite goal - i want mounted troops quickly, on horses.

Mounted archers with minimal armor and +initiative

1 or 2 mounted melee with upgradeable armor/swords per army

You can get solid mounted archers pretty quick.  I start my sov with at least 1 "Air" so I can eventually get cloud walk.  The side benefit is that he will be a haster - haste the archers till the mobs come in melee range then whack em if you can't crowd control them.

My starting order currently is:

Hire First Champ

Buy 2 salted pork

Trade 1

Build Merchant (Market?) in first settle.

Start researching Civ techs

Go Adventure with both together.

Pretty much everything else depends on what I find or don't. If I can't find an additional settle by the time the first 'grows', it becomes a Fortress, if not it is a Town.

If I find an additional settle by the time the first building (or two if I can build a logging camp), then I build pioneers, if not I build a scout.

What skills my sov or champ grow into is dependent on who I am playing and what my mood is. So far the game doesn't seem to depend Sov must be magic user and first Champ Defender/Warrior. It's just that what you choose has to be supported by your research path.

I always have either my second or third settle as a Fortress. This is a personal preference, but it works best for the way I play.

 The randomness in resources, beasts, tiles, heroes, map shape...and the order you find them makes hard to follow a determinated path. Add the faction traits, the magic system, and the loot you might find and all gets more and more complex, as you have to make long-term decisions, at same time that deal with improvisation.

 The game changes a lot from early to mid game and when late game arrives, all the cards must be on the table.

In early game, exploring as much as possible is the most important. The AI is not agressive, but monsters are. It is better to prepare an army with your heroes and farm only easy battles while exploring. You will have to prepare routes between different lairs for that. Although many people recommend to split them, I find difficult that, I prefer keeping them together untill level 4 and choose a path. 2 Assassins or 1 and 1 warrior. Don't get complications with magic if you don't have a good gear, but choice is yours.

Untill that moment, the city can only focus in production. I always research first civic tier first, and usually the second too. The second city will come as soon as you can cleanse the land, but if there are big beasts, forget it and keep exploring. Usually, a relatively safe second city can be settled when your heroes are in level 4. IF you can deal with them and some clubbers, you might finish second Civic tier and start the third, or finish first Warfare tier and give heroes a mount.

Then you can split them, give them an army, and start spamming pioneers to build more cities and outposts to connect all your cities. If you prepare armies without resources (leather and spears) you can advance in the civic tree and keep resources for later. These cheap units will benefit from the unit size grow (3-4-5...) and the army size that provides the civic tree, more than the first weapons you can research. You will lose many of them, but if you can keep producing an army for your heroes, they will go stronger.

And at this point, you might want more heroes, if you find them, or better weapons. That means Magic Tree or Warfare tree...As you have civics developed, it doesn't matter, your empire is growing. Or change between both trees, and improve your fortress.

You will have met an AI or two, so you can have an idea of your power, and you will know if you need more troops (probably). So a third hero with his army comes in hand. Now you might explore part of the wildlands to increase XP quick, if you are not bothered by AIs. So it is time to advance in the Warfare tree and start some good units at the same time than cheap ones. You will need a lot of resources for the endgame units, so don't use them all. Crystal is difficult to gather, but quick in spend in large groups.

Your heroes should be now good killers, protected by units with lots of HP and decent attack, so you can deal with more lairs and quests, and clean those monsters you could not before.

The late game will depend on AIs and cleaning wildlands, so that is too much to say.

I hope this helped

I think you guys all might be going too far with this:

First and foremost, make sure you aren't running version 1.00, Because if you didn't bother to upgrade, every time you load the game the AI is cheating and free-rushing every building in it's queue.  Hence why you might be falling behind.

Probably a better starting point than all the strategy stuff above, as good as it is.

If you are on 1.01 or 1.02, then all the above advice is good.  Here's mine:  Don't forget to enchant your cities!  (not using Enchanted Hammers/Inspiration is a great way to fall behind). At the beginning of the game, set the tax rate to 0%, as you often don't need the 1 gildar/turn you'll get from 40% your capital city will build much faster with the Unrest levels lower - you can sell Wolf pelts to get some money if you really need it.  If you get a Champion with Merchant/Loremaster, they are very handy to help with gold/research - don't ignore them because they can't fight!