Top 10 things a new player should do/know?

1) Install Parrothmath's Mod's. https://forums.elementalgame.com/444851/page/1/

2) Aim towards having 1 Fortress, 2 Conclaves, and 4 Towns in every 7 cities.

3) Don't be afraid to have a Fortress with lots of essence. They make really strong troops

4) Stay away from the Dark Wizard. (Don't underestimate the powers of the dark side...)

5) Be wary of the Banshee. Only magic harms her.

6) Love your units. The more they level, the stronger they get.

7) Don't throw more than 1 hero in an army. They'll split XP and hinder unit growth.

8) AI are no the enemy to worry about. They don't give much XP. They are not that threatening. Monsters and Random events are what you should worry about. They give lot's of XP and can devastate your empire quite quickly if left unchecked.

9) Read everything twice. Little aspects of units, buildings, monsters, techs, levelups, abilities, spells...you can make some pretty amazing synergy.

10) Have fun!

1. AI will declare war on you if you are weak. Every AI personality is the same, and was created to be vultures. Do not attempt to form any long lasting diplomacy with any AI. They are all stupid and evil and your enemy.
2. AI declaring war on you is not necessarily a bad thing, because it will probably lose and your units will level up. This is because the AI completely over-values its mass of shit-stacks and under-values your few uber-stacks
3. Your goal should be to create a stack or two that can win every battle without taking wounds. There are several ways to do this:
1. Create lots of ranged units with as high initiative as possible. 
2. Create lots of horsemen with charge abilities from the fortress and aoe weapons such as spears and axes.
3. Create warg riders with swords and extremely high initiative and abuse access to multiple turns before AI can act by using hit and run tactics.
4. Create "unstoppable" units with super high defense. AI will rarely use magic damage to any real effect.
4. In addition to #3, Create masses of units with only the strongest basic hammer you have, charge, fast and the +damage against higher levels. These are expendable shock troops. They require no special resources, and can each get off a crushing blow before they fall, potentially taking down units much more valuable then themselves.
5. Counter high armor units with mages.
6. Build your own units for everything but scouts and pioneers. The premade units suck suck suck suck. Always use all 3 trait slots.
7. Dragons require heroes with tailored equipment or very specialized units to defeat.
8. Let your resources guide your tech order and play style. Have a ton of shards nearby? Take advantage of them by leveling up a mage and climbing the magic tech tree. Lots of crystal? Magic weapons. Logs of metal? regular weapons.
9. Heroes are worse than units end game. Their sole purpose is to get an early game advantage, get resources and be a thorn in the AI's side mid game. Late game use them for unrest bonuses.
10. Be flexible with cities, considering the following advantages for some unintuitive resource situations. I recommend trying to get one of each of these after your base setups are created.
1. Towns with high production can quickly create some expensive buildings which provide food for the entire empire.
2. Conclaves with high production can be used to quickly create expensive buildings with high research and mana production.
3. Fortresses with high population can be used to reduce unrest across your empire at level 4 and 5
4. Fortresses without any essence can be used to create masses of expendable troops per suggestion 4

heh... logs of metal

More to the point, make sure that your primary troop training fortress(es) have lots of essence. Other fortresses can go anywhere, so once you have a fortress or two on a high essence spot AND you have enough troop-training capacity for your current needs, other high essence spots should probably become Conclaves or Towns (Conclaves get structures with per-essence bonuses, while Towns get lots of income bonuses; a high-essence Town enchanted with Propaganda and producing Wealth can be very good for your economy, and if you pick up the Mint of Ruvena at level-up and cast Arcane Forge, it gets even better).

Also don't be afraid to settle poor locations (e.g. 1/3/0 sites) if they have a strategic benefit, such as enabling you to block a mountain pass or deny the AI access to a peninsula. Just make sure you aren't losing anything better that can do most or all of the same thing.

Early game, two or three trained units (or wolves, dogs, or golems from tokens, or ophidians or butchermen from certain quests) make a decent enough field army for each of your champions without completely ruining your economy. Just try not to have more than two or three such armies, unless they are made up of the wolves, dogs, and golems you can find from loot, or the ophidians or butchermen you can get from certain quests. Strategic-level summons can also work well enough for your early game armies, if you have the mana flow to support them and don't need to make use of tactical spells.

Speaking of spells, avoid casting most damage spells in the early game. Burning Hands can do well enough, especially if the opponents are in a nice line, but things like Flame Dart aren't going to be effective without a mid- or high-level caster and lots of mana. Support spells like Haste and Slow are much better for the early game.

Before you settle an area, clear out the monsters. It's safer that way.

Turn on manual building placement. It lets you shape your cities to control the way your Zone of Control expands, which lets you grab resources or avoid waking monsters you can't deal with, and lets you block chokepoints with your cities. Auto-placement will result in roughly circular cities.

If you have the ability to build a lumber camp in a city, always place that down BEFORE building anything else, even if you later move it back in the build queue. If you don't do so, you could potentially lose the ability to ever place the lumber camp, depending on what shape your city becomes and which direction it grows in. Cities which are partially surrounded by forests (three or more forest tiles around the city) don't really need to worry about this, but cities with only one or two forest tiles nearby do.

Look at the local world resources which your cities can grab - if there are nearby Wild Grain tiles, that 1/5/0 tile next to the 4/2/0 tiles starts to look a lot more appealing, while if there are a bunch of Clay Pits nearby, the 6/1/0 tile may be just as good for you as the nearby 3/4/0. No world resources currently provide essence, though, and essence provides access to city enchantments, which are often very useful, and to the Cleric line of buildings; additionally, certain upgrades to structures only become available if the city has essence.

Essence is probably the most important of the city resources, as with the proper city enchantments it can provide food, production, research, or money, drastically improve locally trained troops, and a lack of it can restrict access to certain buildings. I wouldn't say that a 1/1/4 tile is better than a 4/4/1 tile, but I would say that in general a 2/4/2 or 4/2/2 is better than a 4/4/0, and a 3/3/3 is better than all of them. Remember that this is a general rule, though - forest and river access, what world resources you can get and how quickly you can get them (and how quickly you need them), and strategic considerations like pass blocking have a bearing on which tiles to pick, too.

If you have both Iron and Crystal in your starting area, Iron is the better resource to focus on developing in the early game, since Iron Mines are twice as productive as Crystal Mines, and the techs that improve your Iron Mines also improve your city production capacity and require the first of the food production techs. Beyond that, if you can manage to build the Ironworks wonder, you'll probably have enough metal income off of a single mine to provide for at least your early- and mid-game armies.

Early game research should focus mostly on the Civilization tree, unless you're pressed by a hostile AI faction. Knowledge, Civics, Trading, and the lines leading to Construction and Economics are very good for improving your empire's infrastructure, and the Economics line also includes a few techs that boost the size of your trained units. Don't blindly focus on getting these, though. Leatherworking and perhaps Weapons in the Warfare tree are also good to get early, and if you have horses or wargs you might consider picking up the Mounted Warfare line as well. Early Magic technology is only really good if you've got lots of crystal or want to build on some shards.

i aggree with everything written sofar besides of this:

that is not true, good leveled mages can kill whole enemy armies in 1or two turns, they can oneshot world bosses, and if you play on very high difficulty like "insane", spells that negate enemy armor and stuff are very very usefull (esp. if you lack the crystal for magical damage units.).

Yes, that was a simplification. If you manage to get a hero to the 25 level + range then it's comparable. If it's a mage and you have a lot of mana then that will likely become the most important unit in the game.

Thanks for the tips....

Won my first game on hard.....took over 2 dragon camps and steamrolled the map with 2 dragons and some custom mages I made.

There wasn't anyone that could touch my dragons.....seems to be a bit overpowered.

A hero with the kill spell (kill one enemy unit) and high spell mastery can take out the toughest unit in a battle in the first turn. That is not something your normal unit can do. And its from a distance as well.

re: comment about only one hero per stack.  IMHO I disagree.  My sov almost always hooks up with a hero who plays the role of general.  s/he works up the combat tree that grants army (stack) wide bonuses, with the goal of getting the sweet + initiative for entire stack.  Mid/late game, that stack wide initiative boost often makes the difference.  

A properly levelled mage can easily win you the game. I've just beaten one of the wildland bosses using "Kill" on a Ridiculous game. With maximum spell power, reduced casting time, high initiative, the bad guys had one turn each before I could cast with a 96% chance of success. It cost me 195 mana and I only had enough mana for one try, but 96% seems like pretty good odds (and in any case I had an escape scroll). My army was barely scratched; with two excellent town sites and all the experience and goodies from the wildlands, and the super magic item from the boss, it should be fairly straightforward from here. My mage casting Fireball was the main reason I was able to make it that far into the wildlands, as well. Air shrills are a lot less nasty if you can kill four before they've had a chance to hurt you.

A mage taking the summoning path is at least as powerful. Air elementals and the special summons (skeletons or lightbringer) can let you win battles and gain loot fairly early in the game. Later on, being able to summon tactically dramatically increases your army size, and the 1 radius life ward (i.e. resurrection) of a tactically summoned grave elemental can easily win you hard battles.

I haven't even touched on other ways which your mages can win you the game, e.g. damage spells, healing spells, strategic spells.

You do need mana to support your mages, but that's not too hard as long as you keep constructing buildings which give you mana, use Meditation, etc. Meditation costs zero mana, so if you have nothing better to do with the essence slot on your city, you should always cast Meditation on it.

There are various quick fixes as well. I'm currently experimenting with Sacrifice, which gives you half the population of a city as mana. With a Festival you can get +6 growth, so starting from population 150 that's 75 mana + 40 mana + 23 mana + 14 mana + 10 mana + 8 mana, eventually stabilizing at 6 mana, so effectively you're turning growth into mana. Even if you don't want to do that, 150 mana in three turns is generally plenty to win a few important battles and pick up some good loot or a city or two.

I've come to the conclusion that when you have a powerful enough mage, mana is probably more important than research, if you have to choose what buildings to construct. Researching and producing powerful units late game takes time; winning battles with a powerful enough mage and enough mana takes a lot less time.