You may want to see how people handle the first few turns.

In general there's three good approaches. 1) Self-buffing fighter with Procipinee's crown 2) Direct damage fire mage 3) race customised for early troops

A turn by turn example (hardest difficulty, no restores, clear win by turn 100) of the first approach can be found here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/424198

This game is currently incredibly difficult due to the erratic and unpleasant behaviors of the monster AI.  Luckily, this is supposedly being fixed next patch; if that holds true, then a lot of early-game insta-gibs should be resolved.

The difficulty levels are barmey in EFE, normal being like suicide.  Try starting at beginners level, that way you might stand a chance.  Don't go anywhere near the normal setting unless you have a book full of cheats and a disk full of hacks.  

The game is far from extremely difficult. If you clear out the area around your starting city and start a new city that is not next to a huge monster, then you should be fine. I play challenging and dense monsters and I am having a blast. I am not a "hard core" gamer and I NEVER reload a lost battle. The third and fourth city you get from the first AI that will declare war on you

Yes, sometimes your Sovereign and starting hero can go on epic journeys, just avoiding monsters and visiting goodie huts.  You can often get some quite good loot that way.  Especially prized early on are Merchant's Guild crates or Free Rider caches.  And a great early pick up is the Chain Mail Shirt, which provides great early defense, and best of all has no Level requirement, and the Fending Blade, which increases initiative and gives you two counterattacks, meaning you normally have 3 attacks every time you attack once!

I hope not. I love the monster AI now. The only thing it needs is the ability to attack all players not just you.  The game was boring in previous versions because the monster were not very aggressive.

I'd recommend going for a melee sovereign.  Queen Procipinee isn't a bad choice, for starting out with the pre-made options. I like to expand quickly with new cities, but that is mostly carry over from other 4x games. As far as the hero is concerned, as others mentioned at the very beginning you are wandering around picking up free loot and fighting very weak monsters.

Many weak monsters can stomp starting sovereigns

For a starting sovereign there is a lot of variety in their weak classification from, pushover to stomp you, knowing which is which takes a little time with the game (true for all games like this). You can look at the stats and how many you are fighting, which helps, but really just playing (and save-loading battles for learning what you can take/what the monsters are capable of) helps a lot. Armor helps a lot with some of the weak monsters. (I think it would help new players get started if they introduced a new feeble category of the really weak monsters, I know it would have been helpful for me)

Quests are tough at first

Quest are hard at first even the weak ones, because they typically are stronger weak's, and you don't know exactly what you are going to be fighting when you make your choice to fight. (imho they need to fix quests so you have an idea of what you are fighting, and thus if you can possibly win. It would go well with their v915 change which lets you come back to quests and finish them later). 

Why Queen Procipinee?

She has haste and slow which are both very effective, especially in combination. She has her crown (no upkeep on buffing spells cast on her, which means beginning game you can afford to put buffing spells on her). She also comes with the arcane monilith spell which creates watchtowers anywhere for 30 mana which is incredibly powerful (will probably be nerfed one of these patches) when used properly with careful placement due to the speed at which it allows you to capture nodes (just be sure to avoid waking monsters with it by enveloping them in the zone of control). Of course custom sovereigns can be made which are even better.

Why a melee hero?

The only effective pure mage build I've managed was the fire mage, but pulling it off requires warlock, and is less forgiving about picking unhelpful traits. A death mage may also work as a pure mage, haven't played much with the dark side.

Ranged heroes are much better suited as support heroes and even then hard to pull off. Ranged weapons are lower damage and have initiative penalties. You need a good ranged weapon, and they just aren't that common. After a couple turns in combat you'll end up in melee anyways, where you ranged weapon gets no retal like a spear just with lower damage, init penalties, and no armor piercing. Rarely are battles short enough (read a cakewalk) that the couple shots you get off before they get to you wouldn't have been made up by the melee weapons advantage. If you do go the ranged route, I think the assassin traits are best suited for ranged.

I though I would revisit my thread here. 

I did concentrate on a melee sovereign, with great success. On beginner and easy. I am able to beat the game fairly regularly on those settings, to the point that the AI doesn't really offer much of a challenge. Thanks again for all the advice and help. it really did make a difference!

I cannot however make the jump to normal. I have done everything people have said in starting the game, with city enchants, with Porcie's crown and so on. The two major problems are the way that mobs ignore the AI. If I do find another place to settle before the AI sends its millions of peasants to inhabit, there are deadly or strong monsters hanging around there. I build a force to go get it, and there is already a AI city sitting there now, happily ignored by the mobs. 

I have tried playing aggressively, but I just can't anything decent going as far production early on. I have to be missing something. I mean, I am not super out of control strategy genius, but I have been playing tbs games since the early 80's. I would think I would have shot at Normal difficulty. 

My experiences mirror those of dctrjons.  At high AI levels, you simply cannot rely on troops.   You usually cannot match the AI's tech level, as they get x4 bonuses on population growth and research.  But even at equal tech levels, your damage output pales against their boosted hit points. 

You need to get really good at using heroes in tactical combat.  Mages, warriors, assassins, they all work, but you have to master them.  By the way, power has shifted from assassins to warriors in .915, and I am not sure which is the better combat build.  I still prefer assassins, personally.  I find that for some reason, I get much crappier picks at level up with warriors.