I once made a custom roleplayed Amarian faction. The story concept was that they were a Magocracy of rebellious mages opposed to Queen Procipunee and the rest of the nobility. Being a splinter faction of outcast mages and no nobility = no knights, I figured I should pick the "unarmored" trait for them. Storywise I reasoned that lack of restraint, ethics and reckless use of magic should make them vulnerable to it's effects, so I picked "weakness to magic" as well. In exchange I picked all the traits that favor magic users (Decalon, channelers, enchanters)

I further handicapped them by forcing on myself the roleplayed limitation that a Magocracy of elitist mages shouldn't be able to build towns filled with common peasants or fortresses filled with non-magical brutes, and limit itself to only Seminaries. I would raze any other city type I conquered.

Yeah... that didn't turn out to be such a gimped faction as I thought! I quickly blazed through the research tree, but was declared war upon a lot due to my tiny army making me seem much weaker than I really was. However, I destroyed every stack of doom that was sent against me by the AI by continually bombarding them with strategic spells (scattering them with tornadoes, incinerating them with fire magic, etc). I had a very low gold income for the size of my empire, but that only lasted until I figured out that I could turn my huge mana surplus into as much gold as I could want through alchemy. Before long I was shaping the world itself by creating the Elemental version of the Great Wall (A huge mountain range surrounding my entire domain). A single bottleneck guarded by my heroes and my best troops gave me plenty of time to build a magical paradise where all monsters were eradicated and no faction could attack. Each hero was given path of the mage and could cripple large monsters (fire dart crits were my best friend). Before unleashing them on the world I gave each of my heroes full stacks of battlemage companies who would destroy the rank-and-file of the AI factions while my heroes killed the heroes and other high-priority targets in the tactical battles.

It was very one-sided, but still the most fun I had in any playthrough!

I should mention that this was on "normal" difficulty. Maybe on higher difficulty the AI wouldn't have given me time hoard so much mana.

So, which one was it, Unarmored or Weakness to Magic? Can't pick two.

AI usually falls to a good champion rush.

All we need is making AI use those henchmen effectively, and we, really, need, more heroes on the map. Or like wondering heroes or visiting heroes like in MoM (my god, a 18 years old game has better mechanics..... almost unbelievable)

I don't think we need more heroes. The AI has to use them in a much better way. Not running around in my country alone trying to raze my rescources which they never reach in time. Or giving them the best weapons, armour and above all horses when sitting on a 20000 Gildar stash.

Early rush with Magnar.

Create Slave Scout and Cheap Slave in Unit Design. Cast Consume to unnecessary shards for 200 mana, if there are any, and cast Heart of Fire to your cities (+1 Fire Attack per Essence). Build Slave Scout or Cheap Slave each turn. Search for nearby factions. When meet a faction, propose Economic Treaty to create roads between your capitals. Go to their cities by roads, declare war and capture cities. In tactical battle use Wither, Blindness, Curse, Death Lash, Candlecloak, Cull the Weak depending on situation. Build one Cheap Slave per turn in captured cities (cast Consume and Heart of Fire depending on situation). When you meet several factions you can earn money by declaring war. But you don't need to declare war to more than one faction. Mana and health regeneration are almost infinite, because Cull the Weak converts Slaves to mana/health. So N cities can produce N x 20 mana per turn.

Technology order: Civics -> Trading for Economic Treaties, Training -> Drills for +Army Size.

I play backwards.  I try to find the worst combination.  Must be why I like playing as Procipinee.

I used my first custom sovereign--Kul-al-Kulan and just used the Urxen--i would say that beast lord is probably the strongest strategy that I have used.  I have not created a custom faction.

Try using Procipinee, on sparse resources, sparse magic, and dense monsters.  It is absolutely brutal.  It is so hard to even get started

I love playing with the weakest character, or at least the character that takes the most time to develop.  Procipinee actually can get pretty powerful by the end of the game.  It just takes a lot of time, and is a pretty misrable road for a while.  That is also why I changed the world to make it more difficult.  I do not play on the upper levels, I think Challenging is the right level for me right now.  Maybe one notch up, I have not tried it yet.  Still having fun changing the world conditions.  Played a game with Relias and change the champions to none.  That was kind of interesting.

Ya that seems like an interesting choice for an Empire like Magnar because you don't want challengers to throne, but it's more of an RP decision because the AI kind of depends on them. So, ultimately it is easier.

I absolutely agree with you on this one, but we are so in the minority it's not even funny. And now that this decision has been made, it is too late to change it.

Seriously, there's at least 10 champions that are ridiculously more likely to make a better nation leader than any level 1 sovereign. Hell, when you have henchmen, your sovereign stops being the most valuable unit in your army.  By level 20, henchmen start surpassing him in levels.

So can Nochd, or any henchman.  And good luck getting your sovereign as powerful as some of the level 9 champions by level 9.

Why aren't THEY leading a nation?  Some of them sound very much like leadership material.

Hell, Nochd would be a better leader for Pariden than Procipinee.  I am not really exaggerating.  It may be easier developing a safe strategy with him that with her.  If he had just one level in 'Life', then there would be no 'may' about it.

I go the exact opposite route.  In my last game, every henchman was a defender, and most of them were dual classed into mage or warrior. 

It's quite nice when your 'stun' ability comes with 150+ accuracy and 100+ penetration, and is performed with a hammer that does over 60 damage.

For my first ridiculous/ridiculous attempt I went with a modified version of this. I took enchanters instead of scouts so I could build scrying pools. My sovereign took life instead of air, with the idea of buying air, earth and fire books from my neighbor.

I got off to a slow start because there were only 3 places to build cities until I was able to take out that deep dwelling snake lord thing. However, once I started cranking out the newbies and running quests thing picked up quickly and I was able to clear that boss to open up a couple more city locations.

I must say, this strategy extremely powerful.