I'm new to the game and kind of lost...

You have to build a city. Sov alone is already very weak. 

Build a city -> working on buildings to bring resources -> build armies -> explore.

Elemental FAQ for beginners - please ask your questions here » Forum Post by phazonfreak

Here is a link I used when I started. Monsters are tough from normal on up both on frequency & numbers. Once you build a city you can visit the shop and arm your Sov. Research weapons to get some basic armor/upgrade weapons---must have in the beginning. Play on a lower level. You will have a better chance to get a feel for the game.

I did have a city. Didn't train any units though, was saving up for a pioneer. I did have this Janust character and an imp I summoned with magic. Still embarrassing that a pack of 5 spiders took over my town so easily... Never had a 4X be so short lol. Anyway, thanks for the link, I'll absorb all the info like a sponge and to use lower difficulty settings.

For starters what i usually do is a quick recon of my general area. At the earliest convenience you should invest in some sort of weapon, oak spears are a good start, also get your sov armored as soon as possible with at least a defence value of 3 or 4 (i go with all padded with traveller boots so you can cover ground faster). Getting a little bit of armor in that range should minimize damage from anything you run into for the first 20-30 turns or so. Oak/Boar spears are cheap 25 gildars...it is not uncommon for me to have a sov/hero group running around with a bunch of spears basically farming experience from the hapless spider hordes early on. Put your initial level up points into strength/dex/con, you should find plenty of potions for int points laying around to cover int/etc. Once you get your sov tyo around an attack or 10 (spear) or so with defense of 6 or 7 (all padded, soldiers cloak,traveller boots) he can solo packs of spiders and wolves, plus lower order bandits easily.

Try top recruit pretty much every hero you run across, especailly farmers for their food bonus, and merchants for the gildars (merchants pay for themselves rather quickly). Send the heros with production/food bonuses to your city, and either keep the rest of them with your sov, or fit them with traveller boots/spears and send them off scouting for goodies.

You should be maximizing your city gildar and materials output (build huts, workshops, and at least one study/arcane early on as well)...try to field at least 1 or 2 well fitted spearmen to guard your city/farms. Once youve got a couple of them your realatively safe from wandering monsters for a good 50 plus turns. Dont send out pioneers unescorted, same goes for caravans till they gfet a road link up.

As far as city placement...avoid building ditrectly adjacent to resources, if your city or buildings touch a resource it will add that resource's build time into your build qeue instead of building the structure independantly. As far as i know it ALSO counts towards your city maximum tile limit if it gets absorbed into the city limits. You

Thought that was changed to not affect tile limit a long time ago. I'm pretty sure it doesn't.

As far as early game advice, these guys tips are pretty good. The monsters AI has gotten much more aggressive, and judging by Frogboys new builds will be even a bit more tough. Mostly do to the fact that they group up together into large stack fairly early on.

My opening city starts basicaly as follows.

Scout a bit. Get goodies they will hopefully pay for early buildings.

I build my city one space away from a food plot in a direction where I think the influence will cover most of the resources I've found eventually.

Build a beacon of hope in the direction of the farm.

When its done your influence should have bubbled out to include the farm. Build the farm and start on a workshop.

Build a hut you can connect the farm to your town so monsters can't squish it.

Build a tech research building.

Research military tree.

Continue building huts, techs, and workshops. You can also design a staff man and pop out one/two of those if there are alot of monsters around. He will have +2 attack over the peasant and cost barely any more.

Your town will hit level 2 at some point. This unlocks oak spears. Get some for your heroes.

Design your military units to include a spear. If you still have a long wait and there's alot of monsters pop one of these out.

When research finishes Get the basic armor one. It should have leather armor and cloaks in the description of what it unlocks.

Design a unit with the the oak spear and armor. The cloak is kind of expensive early on you may want to leave it off at this point.

Get your heros equipped with the new armor as you have the money.

At this point you should be ok for a long time, unless you get very unlucky and get a bad monster spawn. For instance I had a skath? with 19atk/17def spawn and get rolled into a group of 2 darklings & 4 spiders my last game. It was early enough on that my heros had spears and some armor but I still only had staff men in the city.  That's pretty much bad luck though. I rarely see such a powerful spawn so early. If he had come ten turns later it wouldn't have been a big deal. As I would have had a couple pike men.

Resources no longer apply to the tile limit of cities however they will use the city build queue if they are (or will be) connected.

I started a new game and followed everyone's advice (made a warrior sovereign) and I'm getting the hang of it now and kicking some ass. Thanks!

That's ok. Last night I started a game with Brad's new .exe and a single bear, yeah a single bear, attacked my city on turn 8 and killed my sov and Janusk. Didn't even have the materials to train a pesant. Humbling experience to say the least, I had just bought Traveling boots for both. Haha.

I know right? I'm deathly afraid of the wandering monsters. I bumped the world difficulty down to normal cause I was sick of fighting like crazy to keep the bears away.

If he can get the AI to be that aggressive when they are at war with me this thing will turn into a real strategy game. Right now even when they are at war they often just stand around. I finished a game on 1.1d with challenging AI. I turned off FOW with a cheat so I could watch what they were doing. If the AI is militarily many times stronger than its opponents it should gobble them up with no mercy. Altar had half the map. It should have been taking out its neighbors one at a time starting with the weakest. I did see some factions get wiped out but it almost seems like an accident.

I had been playing on hard and found challenging a significant step down. On Hard they had metal armors lord hammers and groups. I saw non of that on the challenging difficulty. I guess I'll bump it back up one notch. I think the problem with Altar was that he had a zillion old units. So just looking at its combat scores it thought it was doing ok. I walked in with the soverien and his son and auto-calced 1-2 citys a turn and wiped them off the map. On hard I got my butt handed too me when I tried that.

Hmm... now that you mentioned it, I was using the experimental .exe as well. Coincidence? I'm still using the .exe for my current game but world and AI difficulty is at easy. Much more manageable now.