Total success or complete failure! No in between?

I still think spamming on marginal cities is best, just for being able to put a study there.

THe prestige penalty is verry easy to overcome with buildings/sovereign's call/leveling up champs/sovereign.

The spamming should be punished more by monsters, so that you would have to think about expanding. Please frog, make it so

Essence is extremely important now and you should settle all places where you can get cities with essence.

I have a feeling that now that we have some really good systems and core game mechanics established, we're going to see a LOT of balancing and tweaking over the next several months as we head into beta 5.

As of now having more build queues is unreasonably overpowering mostly because growth and unrest limiters are way too easy to come by.

The diplomatic AI is still being adjusted.  It probably makes sense for factions that strongly dislike you to all declare war once one does, but it doesn't make any sense for ones that like you to do so.  Consider putting a post about this in the bug sub-form.

From my own experiences, the AI builds 5-6 cities quickly, and it's probably a good idea to copy this, if you can.   If you can grab a 6/2 or 3/5 tile, by all means do so, and make the first a regular Town and the second a Fortress.  But in general, the way to go with most other, lower numbers is to grab them for essence, and turn them into Conclaves.  They won't grow anywhere near as fast as Towns, but then, that essence means they'll be able to support various blessings that help them along.  Typically, I'll have 4-5 Conclaves, and 1-2 Fortresses, which means I get plenty of research, plus a couple of cities to churn out units.

Great Original Post, ChungasRevenge!  You make several interesting points ...

With regard to facing the two extremes of:  winning all too easily; or  having virtually no chance of winning, I feel like I have run into this situation too many times myself.  For my part, I much rather face the former situation, rather than the latter situation.  But then again, there are some folks who just love a "challenge", and even enjoy getting the tar whipped out of them regularly, so long as they can savor the occasional/rare  Big Win.  (I think of Joasoze, who replied just above, as falling into the latter category.)  To each, their own ...       

The thing is: it would be nice to increase the probability of facing the kind of games that you most enjoy, each time you sit down to play.  Besides the obvious ploys: choosing the right Level of Difficulty, selecting (or creating) the kind of Sovereign you like, selecting number and type of opponents carefully, holding out for a decent  Starting Position  (Thank Heaven, for the  CNTL-N  feature!), etc.  --  there still seems to be room for improvement here.  I wish we would see a much more robust discussion of this sort of thing  ... maybe we will ...

With regard to getting a Strategy Guide, I would love to see one developed.  Some people have no use for such things, but I just love them !  Of course, it is possible to get some solid player tips right now in these forums; and if the game becomes a big-enough success, one or more people are sure to create such a thing ... eventually ... the key word is: eventually.

With regard to coming from behind, or having more recourses ...  Man-oh-man ! ... does this game need a major enhancement of Diplomatic capabilities !  (The absence of vassel-state relationships is a good example.)  As other aspects of the game have been steadily improved over the last several weeks, the absence of a wider and more flexible Diplomacy capability has been looking more and more like a really serious flaw.  One hope here, is that Diplomacy is often one of the last things to get refined.  We can hope that Stardock will fix it, by the end; rather than "burning out" before they can get to it ...  Those of us who really like this kind of feature need to keep suggesting it to the Devs, on a regular and recurring basis ...          

The reason its a win/loss ATM is there is very few defensive options, I miss some options to defend against an enemy onslaught of better units but only defend, so we could have more prolonged games and have "ties" on the combat field, where each faction would look at holes in the other factions defense, or look for just that one advantage.

Chungasrevenge I would love trying to help you get better at the game, but want to know a few things first.

1 What is your favourite start

2 What is your favourite faction

3 Any custom made sovereigns?

4 how do you currently start a game (map is created, you get your sovereign and is to place a city, what do you do on the first 10 turns, and what is the plan/building queue for the first 25 or 40 turns of the game).

You can PM or just reply here, I consider myself at least proficient with some good starting ideas and a fairly decent game plan.

Hope you don't mind the questions, I will go play a game so the tips will come to mind more clearly.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

1: The faction in question will see you more favourably, but also during a tribute you should struggle to boost your power rating (build troops, build cities) so you will appear less weak to the other factions.

2: I think tarth or another faction (Usually kraxis) bribed all the factions to gang up on you, life sucks sometimes, try to get a peace in with one of these factions, hope for a tribute to one of them, or retry a new map .

3: This really depends, I usually prefer keeping a backbone of 1 or 2 really strong fortress cities (3 grain, 3 or 4 material, 2 or 3 essence), these will focus on being able to produce the best quality troops (enchant them with Aura of Vitality, Aura of Grace, and if some spaces are leftover or you are missing enchants, more production, then more food).
In the current beta (0.952),  conclaves will build higher quality troops if you have a caster being able to cast "Aura of Grace"... IMO anyways. - This is due to bugged buildings, and powerful essence scaling enchants.
and then spam stupid cities all over the map, these will provide gold and research.

4: I will not put up a strategy guide yet, since a lot of the balance will change during the beta5 process, but I will help you here in this thread, or in private messages wherever you want.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Cheers guys. I am at work at the moment so difficult to answer some of the questions. 

I prefer Altar or Tarth as starting player. I haven't fiddled with custom sovs yet. I generally play medium or large maps.

I use CTL-N until I get an area that looks good, 2 essence for my starting town.

I feel I am probably building stuff that doesn't need to be built, e.g., reduce unrest when unrest is at 2% - I need to start paying more attention. Also I only tweaked the other day that growth can stall when food is at zero. I know obvious but I never gave growth much attention, I selected building that would increase growth, I figured the growth was independent of food.

My main beef is that the outcome is so polarised either you are the uber-sovereign or you are the target for everyone. When you are the target it feels like there is very little you can do to prevent the inevitable. Peace treaties generally cost 10x as much as you can muster.

It would be nice if the enemy sovereign lightened up after taking one or two towns. Give the opponent a bloody nose and then sue for peace. That would be pretty awesome.

This is a build queue I usually use

Cast inspiration on my own town first off, if possible sovereigns call too, or enchanted hammers.
As altar you can also try casting tutelage on your sovereign.
Start out with NO taxes and keep them there as long as possible

Pioneer
Merchant
Pioneer
Workshop, bell tower, logging camp, or study, whatever I feel I need - can also be a scout if I feel I need map coverage, although I usually either custom design a mix of militia/scout or a scout with the lowest cost possible.
Pioneer

From here on it all depends on the surroundings, grab as many shrines, clay quarries and grain boosting buildings in the vicinity.

I usually research civics right off the bat, to be able to rush buildings, and then focus on civics most up the way, grabbing "Leatherworking" and "Training" when I feel like I need some troop power.

I usually try to rush buildings with 1 turn left to build, on a lot of the low-turn buildings you can even gain money doing this. (Production will not carry over from one project to the next).

Something that can help a hard start is building a quick militia, if you need some troop power to beat the wild, either that or couple up your heroes in one stack, if its easy then split up your heroes and try getting your sovereign in a level lead, this will boost prestige to help your expansions grow faster.

Some turns into the game when you feel your main city is building quickly enough, try to get some troops on the field, hopefully fully equipped with leather armor, and spears (current version 0.952 this is my favourite).
Remember to use traits.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Thanks, I will give that a go.

I have just started new game with your ideas and spending more time looking at what kind of buildings I am putting down and it appears to be paying off. cheers.
   

Glad I could help, hope you enjoy the game

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

You left out an important factor, the power rating. Your power rating determines the base AI reaction to you. If all the AI declared on you within a few turns then most likely you were at the bottom of the power rating scale. Relations makes a difference but if your power is way above the AI they will probably not declare on you. If your power is really low compared to the other AIs then expect to be receiving tribute demands. Then if your power rating goes too low tribute demands will be replaced by war declarations.

As for what exactly makes up the power rating, not sure. I do think population, influence, and technology points make up part of it. Influence seems pretty useless on the most part, but considering its role in power rating it might be worth it to go after the scenic views.

If you play on a higher difficulty setting the AI accumilates power points at faster rates. So obviously this makes diplomacy matters much harder and war declarations more likely.

Mostly troops build up power rating, that is why I adviced him to build alot of troops.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej