Simple guide:
1. Play a ranger (when wealthy enough, make a second ranger hero)
2. Harvest XP like mad
3. Win

More in depth:

1. Multi classing:
Mage/Ranger/Warrior each has a different fighting style with its own equipment and attacking mechanics which have absolutely no synergy. Never multiclass those with each other.

Only viable multiclass is mage/commander, ranger/commander, or fighter/commander. But while it is viable, it is still not as good as a pure mage, pure ranger, or pure fighter.

2. Base classes:
Ranger: By far the best class.
* As an individual combatant, balanced with same level mage and fighter
+ Fast map travel means faster empire growth, more XP, and better at strategic combat vs other masters
+ Bonuses to exploration rate allows for supreme XP harvest via sitting on a tile with access to both shop (repair items) and recruiting (replenish army). Just explore until reaching 100%, and every single turn you discover a new monster infested place and eat it up for delicious XP. Not having to travel back and forth to other demenses for it means you are gaining at a minimum of 3x faster then anyone else (a turn to go there, a turn to fight, and a turn to go back to a replenishment town)
Those huge massive XP benefits means I get to steamroll enemies who are half my level.

Fighter: Meh class
+Solo: If you manage to outpace enemies in XP and get over 20th level you can eventually start soloing stuff with your obscene armor, resistance, HP count, counterattack, attack, and regen.
-Its not a ranger so actually getting there is hard.

Mage: Meh (at least for good)
*Might be more useful if you use demonology and necromancy... I wouldn't know. Merely casting a spell from either school lowers your karma meter so having such a hero means you end up as evil
-Too dependent on having access to higher power spells.
* Gem dependency largely irrelevant, make too many gems to spend

Commander: Crap
- Auto resolve = death: AI cannot play a commander properly (instead rushing it into certain death at melee) which means its a nightmare of micromanagement to fight each battle manually.
-Usless individually in combat unlike mage/ranger/fighter who can actually fight.
-Can't get the XP it needs. Its too weak to properly level at a decent pace.

The key to understanding the above comparison, is that the classes were balanced with equal levels in mind but in reality due to XP gain rate differences your relative level would be: Ranger >>>>>>> Fighter = Mage >>>>>>> Commander.

Any hero can sit and explore on a tile with shop+outpost so I'm not sure why you've listed that as a benefit only to a ranger?

In any case, I'd say the mage is more powerful overall, except at the very beginning or early in campaign without access to magic school buildings. Especially a mage specializing in necromancy can keep his army filled to the brim with undead units without having to build expensive outpost buildings everywhere.

Scouts are very good against 1 to 3 strong enemies, you can take out things like ogres or enemy warriors quickly so I often take it as my first hero. But against huge strong armies (like an enemy battlemaster with 9 centaurs) a mage is very much better. Gettings spells can be a problem,though, but usually you find some high level spell like Mass Disease which completely cripples the enemy army.
And yeah, you can run out of crystals, these spells use 40 a pop, and some maps like "hills" have almost no crystal income. In the first 10 shards or so I also wondered why there are so many crystals, but now they are really precious, many high level creatures/province guards use tons of them, you need tons to buy the rarer ressources.

I disagree. Not that the Scout is good, but waiting for money to buy a second one instead of a Warrior AND Wizard at much less gold that can start leveling quicker and help explore your provinces? That seems like bad advise.

I agree that Commander seems to be the only viable multiclass, but you are wrong that those options are bad. A warrior that goes Warrior/Commander becomes a Paladin at level 20 getting the UNIQUE skills "reincarnation" effectively DOUBLING his power - and Warrior and Commander skills go fine together. Whereas the pure warrior gains Berserker - yay (or not). I'm leaning towards Paladin being the single strongest class in the game - of course the hard part is levels 10-20 where he does trail a pure warrior (and a Scout), but after that he's terrifyingly strong.

And a Scout/Commander works well too. The Scout obviously gains less strength so if you want a dragonkiller it's bad, but for beating large AI armies he's brilliant (and much better than the pure Scout).

I haven't tried Wizard/Commander so can't speak to that although the idea seems fine once you get the "Mass" spells.

He's no better than any other class at exploring provinces - well I guess he's better than Commander (cheaper since you have to replace less armies), and slightly better than the Wizard (since he's pretty weak until he gets at least level two spells), but the Warrior is certainly his match in this respect. The scouting skill is useless and easily the worst skill the Scout has. All it does is give a little bonus for those few times where you don't find a location. Meh.

His mobility is outstanding though - mostly because of Pathfinding once it hits level 3 so all terrain takes just one move, and this is the main reason he's my most used hero class. Of course you can use Stables to obtain this effect for all heroes, but the "1 building per turn" limit makes it hard to build all the things you want... But he gets this bonus even if he multiclasses.

Combatwise he's weaker than the Warrior early on, strongest of all classes from level 10-20 but only third after level 20 behind Paladin and Archmage (except for dragonkilling where the Archmage is clearly useless).

You start soloing stuff way, way before level 20. The warrior can use each and every goodie armor item you find and if he multiclasses to Commander at 10 every interesting weapon that exists too except bows. This means he gets strong consistently faster than eg a Scout that really suffer if you fail to find a good bow - or Commander that stinks to high heavens without a good banner. Of course once you hit level 20 as a Paladin you solo pretty much everything. Dragons and Cults might not be until level 25 depending on what equipment you have.

I often get a Scout first and a Warrior second and the Warrior almost ALWAYS catches up and then surpasses the Scout in levels as he flattens literally everything he meets - and without having to build expensive outposts to rebuy meatshields from (or going back and forth for them, which loses valuable time).

Main drawback to a Warrior is the obscene maintenance costs on good equipment (and the need to repair it all the time, meaning tons of storehouses need to be built).

I'm sorry, but there are plenty of other great summon spells like Gargoyle, Stone Golem and Phoenix. Also lots of other just great spells like Mass Sleep, Dragonform, etc. Wizards are hard to get off the ground but once they start getting level 2 spells they pick up steam and a fully leveled archmage with access to a level 4 spell guild is terrifying...

This I mostly agree with and would like to add that his dependency on banners are a major problem. In 20 something shards in the campaign so far I've found banners on TWO of them... But the Commander seems obviously best used for multiclassing.

On the early, small shards, I'm finding that scouts are good to start out with but warriors are good to have on hand as defenders. If you build up a warrior, they can do fine with a completely undeveloped army. Scouts on the other hand tend to NOT do as well on their own -- if they're strong it's going to be hard for the enemy to get close enough to cause them problems, but if the enemy DOES get next to them, it's over.

What I've discovered is that if I only have scouts, with my playstyle at least, if they get wiped out, it's harder for them to recover. If I have a warrior on hand as backup, though, he's good for stabilizing the playing field and breaking the enemy's momentum while I get the scout back up to full strength.

I also try to get two heroes out as early as possible so they can both build up from early exploration. A second scout would just cost way too much to get out early, and then they'd be lagging behind and would require some power grinding to get them up to speed, which I'd rather not do.

You raise a good point, it works out well, especially a fighter secondary...

However you should wait regardless because if you don't you end up with 2 commanders which compete for your limited gold reserves for raising troops, and compete for low level XP gain opportunities and end up being under leveled.

My solution to that though is to hire the secondary, dismiss all its troops, and use it only for exploring and NEVER engaging anything until the primary is level 15... at that point its fine to start leveling the secondary against lowbie monsters. Most powers give more on their level 4+5 then levels 1+2+3 combined. So going to level 5 in the important skills more then doubles one's power as well.

The paladin might get 2x HP, but a fighter 5 gets a lot more resistance, armor, damage, counterdamage (very important with a first strike weapon), and regen 3 instead of regen 1. All put together I believe the fighter 5 is stronger... although his troops kinda suck unlike the paladin. Those are critical when exploring a province near the end... taking it to 100% explored means many turns not finding anything unless you have that skill. And the reason to do that is having a storehouse (repair) and a fort (new troops) in a province. moving to province, fighting, moving back to resupply is a huge waste of time. 3x+ turns to get the same results. 550 gold is worthwhile investment to avoid that and allow you to fast harvest XP in a province.

Admittedly I put a low priority on that skill compared to others and only take it when the alternative sucks. Yea, for equal level, but his mobility allows farming XP a lot faster which makes him a lot higher level. Yea but you can't solo enemy positions that early. I notice that too, yes. To quote myself: "-Too dependent on having access to higher power spells".
Yes, if you can get one off the ground, but where are you finding all those goodies? I have conquered 16 shards and I have yet to get a single mage guiild upgrade. Althoughn there is 1 shard now avialable to me with an upgrade to tier 2 mage guild...
Maybe when I get to 100 shards mages would not suck anymore. Although I am worried how the AI would handle them since at about shard 12 I stopped doing strategic combat and set it to full auto.

Hey, fellow Astral Lords, have a free round on the house.
I have been accepted to play the public Beta of the New Game: Eador - Masters of the Broken World, so I am in a jovial mood today. :-)
A pity that I have to postpone playing Eador: Genesis a while longer.

As I progress through the campaign the levels are getting a lot harder. Specifically, as tier 2 and 3 units are unlocked they become necessary to accomplish anything, but they are extremely expensive, this makes shards take longer and longer to conquer. A scout is still an excellent first hero but you do need the others.

At some point a level 30 scout with a full army of strong high tier units can still not breach enemy defenses. (and imagine how many hours it takes to grind him up to level 30 in the first place). I don't mean the enemy heroes and armies, they are half my level if that and die easily, I mean regional guards (which for some reason the AI is able to afford ridiculously expensive ones which I can never afford to field; so it obviously can walk through mine... the solution is a fort with a single militia unit to lock them down for my level 30 scout to engage and kill)

At that point fighters and wizards start to have the advantage because of the level cap and being more deadly in combat then the scout if both are of equal level (and very well equipped; T3 and 4 spells, epic equipement, etc). To defeat Minotaur guards for example I have to simultaneously attack with 2 full stacks of high level (as in, 25+), the first dies and goes to resurrect in castle, but does enough damage for the second to beat them and start sieging the enemy castle.

I also found out that commander can survive and level if its a later hero which enjoys the benefit of superior equipment won by others as well as better units (eg, tier 1 filled with crossbowmen and the metal spear guys with first strike). However the drawback is that by that point corruption starts to bankrupt you so it becomes difficult to finance this.

AI have access to high tier guards, but can set them only after 50-60 turn.

"As I progress through the campaign the levels are getting a lot harder."
This is because neutrals in campaign artificially weakened :)
You don't need high tiers, 3 swordsmen+healer is enough. Little show off
If you get Fairy as Shard reward - use it.

You need to start using diversions + Fear spell.

Killing minotaurs:
a)Ghoul + phantom armor. He can counterattack all minotaurs, and drain a lot of stamina with disease. This is seriously cripple them.
b)Double mass suicide. Mage can do this very easily.
c)T2 necromancy ritual (fear) + fear diversion + Cloud of fear. (basically works vs all living guardians)


You can give to fresh hero high leveled Tier 1 soldiers and go on arena. Level of enemies based on your own, so until 7-8 level Novice division almost harmless. (Although sometimes you can find something nasty like 5 level wizard with summon phoenix spell)

So as the selfproclaimed "autoresolve champion", which kind of units/stategies are best for autoresolving without losing units?

I want to speed up some progess on the shards and want to know which battles are save to play without losing too many units.

With auto resolve you need to resign yourself to units being disposable. Rather then winning without losses its difficult enough winning at all. Generally the power estimation is accurate as to whether I will win or not, but sometimes its way off (it can say I stand no chance and I win without casualties, or it can say I will easily win and I get slaughtered). If it says "we can win this without casualties" it is lying. It means you can win it with massive casualties.

Only units that survive a long time are mercs / hatched units which are higher tier then the rest of the shard (PAY EXTRA FOR THOSE!) or same as shard tier but especially good (ex, high level elf archer).
Occasionally a single unit of the highest tier of the shard will luck out and thrive and go to level 10+. But it has to be top tier...

What do I mean by shards tiers? On early shards everyone is limited to tier 1 units aside from making an alliance or getting a merc. There are higher tiered enemies up to and including tier 4 monsters like dragons but the shard is balanced around tier 1 troops.
When you get to a shard where you can build tier2 units in the castle then suddenly the inquisitors bring tier 2 troops, and rebellions have them, and enemy AI has them, and neutral provinces and caves get a LOT tougher to where you will be slaughtered unless you bring higher tiered troops. The makes things difficult due to cost of acquring such troops but the rewards for clearning dens goes through the roof... On tier 3 shards I can make several thousand gold from clearing a single monster den.

There are certainly individual circumstances you can win with low-no losses but those are fairly rare, its more difficult to get battles where you can win, period. Its way too easy to lose an army and a hero with auto resolve.

Also keep in mind though that I am severely handicapping myself with:
A. No evil/chaotic units, ever. Only neutral or good units.
B. No necromancy/chaos spells, ever. (well, I tested a few on shard 1 but that's it).

Now, for actual strategies.
1. Give your wizard higher tier spells, this is critical for him not to suck. In fact with good enough spell selection an auto resolve wizard can be even more effective then fighter and ranger (for a given hero level).
2. Get your fighter a first strike weapon (you can actually purchase a decent one from a tier 3 arrow shop).
3. I start every shard by getting spearmen, they require no resource, are not evil, and are much better then the stone throwers and militia for auto resolve purposes. they also only cost 25g each so they are easily disposable.
4. When / if you get the resources, upgrade them to pikemen who have first strike, and to crossbowmen. Crossbows give -50% to enemy ranged armor which make them vastly superior to the other 2 archer units from tier 1 (plus more armor). Pikemen first strike, slow move, and decent defenses make them much more realistic to survive.
5. Get nothing but crossbowmen for tier 1 as soon as you unlock higher tiers.
6. Prioritize an alliance with centaurs, centaurs are the ideal tier 2 unit and also give you an awesome guard unit... but if you can't get them do with whatever tier 2 units you can get.
7. Initial fights should be all low level encounters. Of those the undead (containing only skeletons and zombies) and the demons (containing only imps) are good for level 0 heroes. By level 2 or so you can tackle adventurers and mages, by level 3 or 4 goblins, orcs and so on... a lot depends on the specific units the encounter has.
8. With the exception of crossbowmen, melee units are generally superior for auto resolve then ranged. Enemy closes distance too quickly and has too big an advantage vs ranged units.

For tier 1 shards, crossbowmen + pikemen + random higer tier merc is a winning combo that can win with low losses.

For tier 2 shards, centaurs... unfortunately most non evil tier 2 units have ridiculously high speed so they tend to rush the enemy and die on auto resolve. (horse archers, mounted soldiers, and pegasuses).
Centaurs survive more just by being a lot stronger then those other 3 tier 2 units.
Balistas have low move but are ridiculously expensive... Sure they work really well against some creatures, but fail vs others. They are not really more effective then other tier 2 units while being so much more expensive as to be prohibitive. The exception being for a fighter hero who charges into the enemy and holds its attention, at which case Ballistas are good.

For tier 3 shards I only discovered catapault and that monk unit (healer, magic ranged attack) so I can't really make any real strategies yet.

to add to taltamirs points

for your wizard: don't give him summoning spells - not even one - the autoresolve AI tends to prefer summoning over damage and does so whenever they can - leading to a dropping karma unless your summons are phoenix/golem/gargoyle

also good for an autoresolve without losses is a chieftain/sharpshooter (yeah level 20+) with two or three monks/clerics as backup - they will die against certain enemies but it will enable your warrior to slay nearly everything (with decent equipment you can even clear the cult of the phoenix/dragon - and they are harder than anything else i encountered - including all high level province guards the enemy threw at me)

on the other hand i really like the commander
early on you have to fight manually - but with illusionary battle you can level all of his troops and even without a banner they tend to be half immortal once you get discipline and defense tactics to level 3/5 - then i just tend to stuff him with 6 crossbowmen/elven archers, 4+ guards, 2 monks/clerics + whatever tier 3/4 melee i can get my hands on like unicorns/treants/minotaurs (those are awesome with round attack and forced march they are like a mid level warrior - but 3 of them)
then i pack his spellbook with 1 mass haste 2 hallucinations and 5 or so astral energies - now you can pretty much auto resolve most fights - or if you are like me you manually resolve until you got all the medals for the units you want (fighting against slugs can easily net you the medal of resilience and the healers medal is you let the slugs shoot one unit and just heal the poison damage all the time)
if you think that the encountered enemy has units that could endanger the life of some of your units (because the autoresolve AI stinks) just manually fight the fight until that particular dangerous unit is dead and than press F10


on a completely different note
I started to try out mixed classes - and the one i really like is the enchanter/master enchanter
thats a wizard turned commander up till level 10 i try to give him concentration level 3(spell duration), wisdom level 3 (exp+ extra spell slots) and spellpower or thaumaturgy one of them level 3 the other level 1 and after 10 only the commander skills (you can get all seven of the available commander skills to level 3)
his special ability increases spell duration so your buffs practically last forever -and he can wear medium armor (like the veteran or the hero set)
furthermore he only has 1 rank 4 and 1 rank 3 unit less than the pure commander and 1 rank 4 and one rank 3 spell less then the archmage - of course he can only cast once a round - but with spells like mass attack/mass defense/mass heal and timestop he becomes a force to be reckoned with - but you will have to manually resolve the battles

Thanks mr.teach for those good notes, I concur with pretty much everything you said.

Although on the spell selection, you said yourself that elemental summoning is fine, and its important to note that non summoning necromancy spells (fear) or chaos spells (suicide) are still verboten.

You put forth a good strategy for getting a commander, indeed I have managed to field a few successfully and they were stronger then any other class for the same level.

The problems were:
1. its very hard to finance those large armies.
2. its hard to level him past those pesky early levels.
3. By the time you can afford to finance one (including high end equipment as well as troops) low level encounters are too rare and it takes too long to find them to level him (further slowing his development).
4. By the time you get him, he is too many levels behind enemy heroes/ your main hero.

At the moment I get my heroes in the order of: Ranger, Fighter, Mage, Commander.
And I use the ranger and fighter to fight AI and mage and commander to improve my empire via exploring and clearing lairs.

Well past the early game i never had financial trouble but that might be because of my playstyle.

First off i play very long on each shard - basically exploring half the provinces to 100% thus i have neither the gold problem (4 heroes exploring means 600 or so gold extra each turn - and those completly explored provinces give sooo much money)
so i still have enough encounters to level all my heroes (well the first four - if i am crazy and hire another four those tend to really lack behind)

Also i hire in a different order:
I start with a warrior because he can solo-capture provinces once he is past level 10 if you got decent equipment maybe even earlier. Then the scout (his scouting-ability makes a difference if you want to explore as much as i do) third the commander (because of him leveling so slow - but i counter that with illusionary battle - awesome ritual - and manual fights - i try to let him lasthit some creeps and cast every round - mostly astral energy so my healers can heal more and get the healers medal) and last the wizard because he can catch up faster and by then i have the school for fireball.
If the wizard starts with either spellpower/wisdom/concentration/thaumaturgy i try to make him into an enchanter otherwise archmage.

Oh and on the summoning topic- ofc elemental summons are ok for your karma - but the quickresolve AI really is stupid - just try the autoresolve (F11) once and you will see - he sends the healers on the front lines - and just moments ago i did it with my wizard against some goblins and orcs - he killed all of them except one with rain of stones and fireball - and then summoned a phoenix - totally wasting 80 or so gems - on shards with loads of forest (where i always hire the forest spirit guard or the unicorn guard - both consume gems and not gold while raising the population mood - and being rather strong) this can be rather bad for your gem income.