My sad tale; a noob's first game...UPDATED with first win!!!

The campaign is good for learning controls, but it leaves out the most important thing (research) and does not give a good sense of how the game is paced. This results in many people losing their first non-campaign game.

Well, I actually lost the very first two games I played out of the box. But, I count those as learning games since there is no manual, no tutorial, no explanation at all really as to game play. In all honesty, I had no idea what I was doing & just groped around in the dark figuring out how the game worked as best as I could. But, by my third game I couldn't lose even on hardest setting. I won't ruin your fun though, so I'll just let you figure out the strategy on your own. Though, if you really want to know, it's been discussed in detail in several other posts.

You did better than me my 1st score was a 1!

For stretegy games, for a tutorial, I set the game to easy, get as far as I can, restart the game when things start going south, and keep trying to do better until I can finish a game.  So, your experience was probaby about the same as my first game, but without all the crashes.

Your research trees are the ones I usually pick and are perfectly fine for winning the game.

Yeah, I understand how things went for you. You play other 4x games or RTS in general and you assume certain features like city militia might save you in those tense times. But then they don't and in this game cities on the fringes get steamrolled. Ofcourse, it goes without saying the games needs an overhaul. Settlemenets are too easy to take and some improvements found in the tree- without them you're gimped for tens of turns.

You're probably doing better now but if i could offer some advice go about the game like I did: I wanted a domination victory and I felt the need to eventually kill everyone else in the game. So I reasearch warfare like an addict and put huge stacks of soldiers on every city whenever I get the chance. I also refuse to marry off my children and I use them as the spearhead of my armies.Even if you can't afford great stacks of soldiers with halfway decent equipment, putting them in a stack with a channeler raises their survival rate. They level up in fights and while they never have more attack, their health is increased and they're able to rend comparable stacks or act as meat shields against stronger enemies while channlers/archers whittle them down.

You need to build a few troops just to discourage this sort of activity.  The AI decided you were ripe for the taking and moved against you.

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Totally agree. At first, I got attacked more than a few times, but the AI hasn't declared war on me in awhile--a little defense goes along way.

This is actually behavior that I'd like to see different from GalCivs. With GalCiv, you're never going to get attacked if you maintain a certain amount of forces. And if you don't, you get stomped. This leads to repetitive games with the player as the only aggressor.

Oakenspirit, take heart.  Think of your experience as a baptism of fire.  You are now seasoned, and ready to apply what you have learned to your next experience in EWoM.  The learning curve is steep - and many style work, or don't work, depending on a variety of circumstances.   HAVE FUN with it.  Go in, try things.  if they work, use them again.  If they don't , well, don't use them again.

IS very important to have a strong, effective military.  Only marry of sons, not daughters.  married sons stay with you, and the wife joins you.  (You keep some of their children, not all).  Don't marry off a daughter - keep her as a channler, leader. 

Use wandering monsters as opportunities to level up your troops, sov, court. 

You did research some magic to help your SOV?  flame dart, level 2, then summoned familiar? 

Just remember, much of what you learn MAY be changed in ver 1.1...  I've set aside EWoM and play galciv - but I need to find mods for it... it is too easy now - even on hard settings.

*ROFL* Sounds like they actually have tried to use MoM as a rolemodel...

Even with just a few peasants sitting in my cities, my second game seems to be going much better...  I am not ignoring the war tech tree now and just got my first mounted soldiers!  

I have yet to have children though...  Guess this is the next game system I need to mess around with seeing how much of the advice above deals with offspring.  

Thanks all for your advice!  I am the type that failure makes me want to try harder, so I am not disheartened yet.  I am actually more engaged now than I was in the first game.

I don't mind towns not innately having a defense of their own, but it would be cool if the citizens could try to be at least weakly battle ready if the need arised.

As far as children go...Make sure you marry someone first of course . To do so, hire a champion of the opposite sex of your sov. Then, click on them. On the bottom of the screen towards the left, you have the actions this Champion can do. There should be a ring in one of the boxes. Click that, and it will ask if you want to marry this champion. You have to have a certain reputation in order for them to marry you, so make sure your sov has a couple fights under his/her belt before asking to marry them. (If it doesnt let you, make sure when you send your sov to fight that the champion isnt with the sov, otherwise they both gain reputation, and you wont ever get enough to marry him/her). Hope this helps.

I'd prefer marrying my royalty off to Peasant Girls and Farmers ...

I usually found that to be the quality of the units as well. Sometimes even with more than a few of the medium ships another race came knocking (maybe not enough firepower?. I do remember one time 3-4 races decided that they had enough of me and entered into an alliance against me. I have also experienced that in Civ 4 (haven't picked up 5 yet--too busy playing Elemental). I, too, wish the AI would be a little more creative with attacking strategy.

i seem to recall Galciv's AI was a little tougher. hopefully 1.1 will give us some challenging changes.

Well...   with all of your advice, my 2nd game banked me my first victory!  

I ended up going the adventure route and on turn 666 (seriously...  666) I completed the forge and my golem army stood ready for, well...  whatever it is I am going to do with them.

The way it ended had a slight sinister undertone I was not expecting that was pretty cool.

I ended up with a 54 as my score.  Again, I have no idea what sort of scale this is on (nor do I know if 666 turns is on the long side for a victory) but its better than my previous game's sad little 4.

I had to go to war and wipe out one other kingdom, as they harassed me and kept taxing me until I couldn't take it any more.  Otherwise, though, it was smooth sailing.  The last battle was pretty epic, as I had me and my 4 best mageish  children go to battle with the hermit bringing along with us several horsemen and archers as well as our newly acquired dragon friend.

I think I'll try the magic victory in game 3.

Anyway...  thanks for the help everyone.  I had a blast.

Yop, turn 666 fall in the "long game" type. The fastest I saw was 250... on medium I think. I prefer long game (1000 + turn) but it's my personnality .