I finished a Pariden game last night on small land mass and normal difficulty.
I started out on a small continent with a single land bridge to the main continent. My first champion was a fire mage. The most dangerous monster den near my main city was an umberdroth but fortunately there was enough space to not trigger it till I killed it much later. Initially, I only managed to found a single city on this continent but later reloads revealed that I could have fit two more cities.
My primary hero was my sovereign and her 2 sand golems. I think the sand golems got the 2 summon level bonus because they started off at level 5. Later on, my fire mage champion joined the stack. This was the only stack I really used for the whole game. This was partly due to the fact that I was stuck with less than 10 gold for most of the early game till I completed a quest that gave me 300 gold. The 300 gold let me hire two other champions on my land mass.
After exploring most of my continent, I bumped into a stack of Yithril explorers. I did not want them to accidentally trigger the umberdroth so I declared war and neutralized them. I then discovered the land bridge so I planted an arcane monolith to block the land bridge. Once my city was secure, I started spamming arcane monoliths to steal shards and explore the continent. This allowed me to discover where one of Yithril's cities was located.
Knowing that the last time I got stuck with one ore two cities I got stuck in a long drawn out stalemate, I proceeded to take over the Yithril faction. This netted me 3 under developed cities. Their locations seemed relatively secure so I left them undefended and proceeded to tackle the Kraxis threat. They recently declared war on me and destroyed some of my monoliths.
Once again, I used arcane monoliths to try to take over as many Kraxis resources as I could. Then I tried to take over their nearest city which proved to be too tough. It was a single square city with 4 champions and multiple units. Basically it was an armed outpost. My escape spell saved me from total defeat but I think I provided a level or two to some Kraxis champions in the process.
Given then I was not going to take over that city any time soon, I concentrated on trying to contain the Kraxis threat and leveling up my main stack to the point where I could overtake Kraxis. My main city was busy building world wonders so I had no Unit support. I did manage to find a poorly defended city deeper into Kraxis territory which I took over and gave me a base of operations. From there I collected all unretrieved goody huts, killed stray monsters and completed any quest Kraxis failed to complete. This gave my champion enough experience to be able to cast fireball. From then on the rest was cake.
It took me about 275 turns to complete the game. I could probably have completed the game sooner through conquest if I decided to take out Altar but their placement was such that I'd have to fight a 3 front war with a single stack. Perhaps I should have Allied with Altar first before defeating Kraxis because apparently you can not get an allied victory when there are only 2 factions left standing.
