Getting seriously overwhelmed?

I find archers to be... REALLY HELPFUL.  If you make your own faction you can do the archery thing that lets you start with archers... it's nice.  I think one of the base factions also has this in their list.

Also, researching magic to get that first Elemental summon gives you an amazing guardian/force of nature.

Research the adventure techs first, and select the advances that give additional goodie huts. This will give you lots of money, so you can buy equipment for your sovereign. Make non-aggression agreements with the other factions, and you can buy equipment in their shops.

You don't need to settle near resources or specialize, you should plant cities everywhere you can, there is no penalty not to do so and even if you don't have food to rank the city up, you can still gain from it.

I'm not sure how you are getting overwhelmed, can you elaborate?

Good starting techs are adventure (forget what empire is called) as they can give you some early resource to help pump out pioneers.

Must have: A sword on your sovereign, found in some goody hut or bought.

Hire Janusk.

Build just one city. Others aren't needed to get started.

Build a workshop, a merchant, a mundane and arcane lab. It will take time.

Research military (name depends on whether you picked empire or kingdom). You should be able to buy some weapon when you have amassed enough gold.

With one weapon and some limited armor, your sovereign can take out most early indies and level up. Get some essence.

Spell research: If you can research summon fire giant (or earth), so that. Otherwise, pick the increase level option.

Once you have researched a fire giant. Summon it. Go with him and your sovereign and kill everything that moves.

Tech-wise: Research some weapons, then squads. Build a squad or two. Send them in a forest and have them hun tspiders/wolves and make a lot of money.

At this point, you can build more cities. In order to get more gold from the cities, research trade and build caravans, send them between your cities for more gold.

If you find some decent heroes, imbue them, level them up so they have enough essece, make them cast a fire giant too.

Keep researching military techs only. Squads, then whatever-the-name... Build armies with 8 or 12-man units, with the best weapon you can find. You may even pay for some armor, but that's mostly optional. Send your army against nearest ai. They should have many more units than you, but not in squads, and they'll be easy to dispatch on the tactical map. Just remember to attack the cities first, and the enemy channeler when he's standing outside your new city in your borders so you can kill him.

This should more or less work well enough to get rid of at least one enemy. Then you can look at other techs to complement what you've got. You may also dabble with tactical spells, but the spell system should be redone so no point going too deep this way.

the stone giant is great because he gets that rock slide (or whatever) spell

but the ice lord is the strongest i think

the fire summons are pretty boring, though flamestrike or whatever is okay

IF you're careful about where your first city is created you can adequately function  with just 2 citys.

Always Found a city near multiple resources, food is the first priority and mining is second.

Don't research just 1 Branch, Start with Civilization, research until Level 4, Switch to Warfare Research until Level 6, Switch to Adventure research until level 4. Switch back to Civilization Research a few more levels.  When all branched reach Level 10 Switch to Either Magic or Diplomact and Research those branches for 4 levels.

While doing this use you Sovereign to Explore around your city.

You don't need that many cities, if you plan to take over others as soon as possible focusing on your capital alone is often enough. Even if you plan to build your cities, it depends on the map size and number of AIs. The food/gold city is usually your capital anyways, you want a city with tech bonus (near a library or two), but you can usually get by without an arcane city unless you happen on a couple of arcane temples (not likely) Most of the useful spells can be gotten without a serious arcane investment, unless you plan to win using the spell of mastery. Any other usually depends on the resources you get.

Tech and pointers depends on which side you play (Kingdom or Empire). If you're playing kingdom, the exploration branch of adventuring techs are super useful early (usually best to research them once your city reach level 2 and before expanding further for maximum effect). Civics is good if you want to develop your city and get the most out of your resources. Empire is a bit harder to give tips for because their techs don't always appear when you want but they still play pretty similar (I've only tried them out a couple of times).

As for sovereign, I go with earth (for raise/lower land) and water (for ice spike, blizzard) for spell books, royalty history (to make your cities grow twice as fast), organize (to move your army easily later on) and intimidating (super powerful late when combined with your heirs) for traits. Stat wise, go 5 str, 5 dex, 15 wis, 15 int, 15 cha, 13 con (an imbuement build). It's a build that focuses on hiring and imbueing heroes and using blizzard to do AoE damage, so str and dex is almost meaningless.

You must be very talented to get overwhelmed in this game. Juts research some warfare techs, build a squad of lowly militia and rush all the adversares on the map.

I think eHandel forget what his/her first game was like with auto-turn enabled I did not even realize the turn count had ticked over 50 w/o having built my first town.

I'd recommend turning Auto-turn off so you know when the next turn ticks over.  That right there will help slow the pace down a bunch.  Int eh current implementation there are 4 ways to win, only one is a military takeover of everyone.  there is the Alliance/Peace rout and the Spell of mastery route also the Master Quest route which is... inventive to say the least... my first master quest victory require that I either make an alliance or go to war to get to the next Quest destination... I thought that was an interesting side-effect.

Do your own thing there are naturl optimizations you can choose to take or just Role Play and do your own thing... most of all, Have Fun!

I'm really not trying to make fun of you, but that's one of the funniest things I've heard in a long time.