Ummm ... can we have about three more levels of difficulty BELOW beginner?

Yes, she is by far the worst. Not impossible to play, but hard.  If you want to see how I play her on challenging, here is a play through.

I think the main problem for me is that I can never get any units better than Destiny's Guard and they are about as strong as wet cardboard.

No matter the difficulty level, the AI out-expands me, out researches me, out produces me and out units me.

A basic strategy that makes the game run a little easier is to ensure that you have enough cities to compete. ctrl - N is also another option that you may or maynot use. For example if you have a poor starting location this could lead to difficulties the rest of the game for which you may not be prepared.

There are always cheats you could try. Till you figure out what you are doing wrong, for example you can watch what the AI is doing to be so successful.

Porcinipee does in fact suck unless you really know what you are doing, get lucky with placement, and still..... Try a warrior Sov, and just concentrate on leveling him up, you really don't need normal units in this game at the lower level's.

Check the play through, serious.  The link's in the above post.  I cannot give you a full strategy here, but you should be doing all of these at least until you learn how to roll your own strategies:

1. Your first city should have solid materials, so it can produce, and solid essence so that you can enchant it.

2. Use every essence slot for city enchantments.  Porcupine has Inspiration (A MUST - doubles your early research) and Meditation(combat mana)   If your first hero has "Earth", use "Enchanted Hammers" instead of Meditation.

3. Immediately research civic (Growth bonus, unrest building, and rushing) and reduce taxes (the city makes nothing anyway, but taxes create unrest)

4. If your first city has a forest, start a logging camp. If not, and you did not get two essence slots, build a scrying pool. If neither, start a tower of dominion.

5. Use your two heroes (P. and whoever) to explore two directions.   Do not worry yet about fighting, get the lay of the land.

6. Once you have the tower, build a pioneer, and settle the spots found by your hero, WHILE MAKING SURE THERE ARE NO BIG BEASTS around.  Anything you do not think you can kill with two heroes and a militia is a BB.

7. Kill the easy monsters, loot the free goodies, GET the libraries, decide how your heroes will grow. Build a few militias if you need them.

8. Researched civic, restoration, knowledge, and administration.  Build logging camps, workshops, studies, and unrest buildings in your cities.  Remember to cast enchantments, and build scrying pools when you can.  ONCE you have the unrest buildings, start building gold buildings, and MAYBE raise your taxes. (I do not, but I get a lot of cash from loot, because I'm quite good at tactical combat)

9. AFTER you have researched civic, knowledge, administration and restoration, get basic leather clad spearmen by researching training and leatherworking.

10. Build as many spearmen as you can afford. Kill stuff to support them.  Use haste and slow in hard fights, but not unless you need to.  Retreat your wounded units.

.... This is too long already. Read my playthroughs.

And it is much easier if, instead of Procipinee, you use a overpowered custom sovereign to learn the game with.

Best one, in my opinion (stealth is missing, despite being very powerful, but if you play with stealth, you are learning bad habits and missing 2/3 of the game)

Race:  Krax blood, Empire, enchanters, scouts, defensive, lucky, light plate +vulnerable to magic as a weakness

Sovereign: General, clumsy, brilliant, wealthy, hardy, Death, Water

How to win: fortify your sovereign and troops, research civics and rush with your cash, get Death II and use blindness against big enemies, make your troops good dodgers.

This is a very strong race.  I win more often than I lose on ridiculous with it.  You do not need such a strong race to win on easy, but it will let you learn tricks.

Thanks for the details!  I'll definitely give those a try

What concerns me about advice like this is that it makes it seem this is the only way to play when there should, at least in theory, be multiple paths to victory even in the very early game.

Magnar is probably the most powerful to play, if you figure out a decent strategy with his slaves.  Procipinee, on the other hand, is very difficult to play.  No unit combat bonuses hurts on the small map, and inefficient production, even with Enchanted Hammers, hurts on a large one.  You need luck, and a lot of strategy to overcome these even on lower difficulty levels.

If you want to play a Procipinee-flavored custom sovereign, consider going with one that has Life (Heal) and Earth (Enchanted Hammers) apprenticeship.  Make him/her a summoner, because that warg will be a great help in the early levels of exploration and lair battles.  Take Procipinee's crown, so you can give it to your first champion--who hopefully will have some melee skill.  I suggest a longbow, too.  Yes, the initiative is ridiculously poor (at least, if we have a shortbow, the low damage should be compensated for by a better initiative--but it isn't), only it will let your sovereign get in on the battle action, weaken enemies before they get close, and possibly destroy them altogether.  Grab an extra allocation point by making that sovereign Clumsy, which doesn't matter if you're using ranged weapons or magic, and go for Attunement.  That way, you'll have more mana for combat spells, and especially for arcane monoliths.

I agree, there should be at least a "cake walk" level like GC2 had, if SD is unwilling to nerf the AI bonuses on easy.

OT: In the games I've played so far, only once has the AI used magic against me. All other battles were strickly military.

This game really should be called "Fallen Palidin" not FE, because magic is underpowered and/or rarely used.

One question to all of you asking for more weaker difficulty levels: you do know, that there is a Novice difficulty, right? Maybe you could try this one, if Beginner and Easy are too hard for you at the moment.

I didn't see novice as a difficulty choice. I don't even see "beginner" I'll look again.

Click the left arrow on the difficulty-sliders. Beginner is one, and Novice is two steps below Easy.

Isn't Porcipinee the one that starts with that item that lets you cast buffs on her and they cost no upkeep? 

If that is true then I found it easy to play with her. Early game you buff her like crazy, give her some weapons and armor and fight in melee. Once she becomes a competent spellcaster you switch to high initiative and fireball with her familiar casting haste on her. You also get to use that wolf summon from early on and get to summon elementals later. If you get lucky and get another caster champion, AI players cannot do much against you later. You got lots of mana and your spells oneshot most armies.

Yes, I have heard that sentiment expressed.  I am not sure I agree with it.  To me it seems like basic stuff that you always do "build peons first". 

I have won without doing this - on smaller maps, you can do with one city and get your others from AIs (or even raze them, if you're playing with slave lord and arcane monoliths)  You can also win with solo sovereigns, by cutting your capital off the map and going for a master quest (harder nowadays, but you still have spells that can do it)

So the above is not the only strategy I play, but it's a good strategy to learn the ropes.

That said, if you want to have a decent chance to win on ridiculous, without reloading/restarting, it's one of the only two strategies that I have found to work.

Personally, I give the crown to the first hero I meet, because chances are, s/he will be a better melee fighter that Procipinee.  Procipinee can provide battlefield spell support (Haste, arrow shield, slow).  You have to remember to let Procipinee get an army and start gathering xpt on her own at some point, for the prestige growth bonus.

Clarification: in order to get fireball, you have to either use 'steal spirit' on a fire mage (evil and innefficient) or research spellbooks in the magic tech tree, and buy a fire tome for Procipinee to read.

Yes.  She's also the one who has inefficient production, and no combat bonuses.  She comes with some long term benefits--arcane monoliths, the crown, the apprenticeship in various spell schools--but has severe shortterm limitations.  On a small map, she's a disaster.  On a large one, she takes a long time to get going, and has to be isolated for a good while to make the most of her strengths.  While you can put her at melee if you want, I typically put her at the back, give the crown to someone else so they'll be able to use the buffs with no upkeep, and let her use arrows so she can hold off on spells until her resources and buildings start regenerating lots of mana very quickly.

Couldn't agree more. Those maintenance-free slaves are amazing fodder AND a great way to generate mana with Cull the Weak. Oh, and those cheap-cheap stealthy Slave Scouts == opening the map faster than anyone else.