[Fantomen]

SsSams post is a very nice paractice. It will work fine in CBM, all the ingredients are pretty much unchanged. I would try expanding with the normal troops though, not only hydras. Because that will give you better general practice of battle tactics. Pythiums regular troops are very very good, so that shouldn't be a problem really.

But what really changes strategically as you learn the game is that you gain the ability to envision each specific nations power curve from early to late game, and then make a plan on how to make that power curve as smooth and fast as possible. I understand you agony, because it takes quite a while to get there.

For example:

MA abysias power curve the way I typically envision is: Fire resistant infantry + AOE fire evocations carry the early game, then building critical mass of soul contracts to get devil raiding squads going, then combining that with vampire defence,zmeys and horrors, then use that vamp defence and raiding to shield a blood sac victory, and if that doesn't work to shield me while going for late game blood magic and high level astral spells. Paralel with all that I need to build up some diversity in magic access, but I can afford to neglect some diversity if it favors my overall plan.

That's a reasonably clear vision for a strategy, so what pretender design do I need to execute it? What are the tresholds in research? How many provs and forts do I need in year 1 to lay a base for it? How do I manage to get that number? And how do I manage it all under attack from other nations that won't take any consideration at all to my vision?

All that you need to manage to stand a chance in a game with good players. In a newbie game you can afford a suboptimal plan, but I do believe that a plan is needed. The guides are generally written to provide that kind of plan. As you say they assume basic understanding of the game, but that can only really be gained by playing long enough.

Playing against the AI is alright as basic practice, like expansion and battlefield placement of basic troops. But the problem is that so little of the big plan is needed to win. In the above Abysia example you can just go one or two steps to win against any AI. Since abysian infantry + fire evos combo will kill anything the AI can do you will never be forced to take the other steps, and translated into MP the other players will kill you because that combo is easy to counter for any human player after year 2 or so.

But on the other hand you can challenge yourself by executing the plan against the AI whether it's needed or not, and try to run through the power curve as fast as possible. At what turn can I get 20 provinces? At what turn can I have 25 soul contracts? and so on.