I just lost one party to the spiders on part two of the main Empire saga for Dark Prophecy, those damn swins, 420hp and 370hp... is there anyway to bring them back if they all died horribly?
I'm struggling a bit with this game, I'm trying to spread my decent levelled units so they're not all Squires and acolytes but then any party that isn't Witchers and Assasins tends to get walloped damn hard by most enemies. Any other tips?

If they're ALL dead, hero included, then I'm afraid you can't bring them back, they even disappear from the adventure map. If a hero survives, he/she can get the remaining members to the capitol and have them resurrected (provided there is a temple built).

Yup, hero's dead. That's a shame. Bloody spiders.

As long as you have at least 1 member of the party left, even a normal guy you can get them back to town and ressurect everyone else. Its only when the party disapears from the world map that you lose them forever.
I would advise saving fairly often in that game. Sometimes you will have to play bits over as its a fairly unforgiving game if you mess up.

I've found a mage leader with another wizard and a group healer in the back row is often pretty powerful. Once your mage leader gets strong enough, he's often a hair away from killing a bunch of enemies with his first blast, and the wizard's damage seals the deal on wiping out the entire back row in one turn.
The second mage is often but surprisingly not always the first target. Often it's the healer and sometimes it's even your mage leader, who may have more hitpoints than anyone else in your whole party. If the wizard is attacked first, your healer is more likely to live through the first round, which is a huge plus. If the wizard does not get targeted first, he helps mop up the back row when it's his turn and there may never be another attack from the back row to harm either him or your healer cuz they'll all be dead from that mage and wizard sweet double-teaming action.
So you often the wizard makes a big positive difference whether he gets targeted or not.

That's really interesting, Iis your mage going on the front line, or does have two squires infront?

I guess I was speaking more generally than addressing specifically when you can only have less than six total characters in your group. When I have less than the full six, in my main group I always put a priority on building up a healer first. So in a mage-led group, when I can use four including leader, it's mage leader, healer, squire, squire. When I can use five, I add either another squire or another healer. With six, I have done pretty well with mage leader, healer, 3x squires, and wizard in back.
When I get powerful enough that I can start killing my opposition with one less than my full number of guys, I often transfer one of my guys to a secondary group to help it survive better, and help it build the experience necessary to fight back raiding parties. A second healer is excellent for that. Then I put in a newly bought character in the back row to develop it. Usually a wizard or another healer. Sometimes I even do this more than once in the course of a map.
The new characters getting stuck into my main group for development are weak and die a lot at first, but also level fast and become powerful enough for a second group pretty fast too. They can level a few times in just a few turns.
I've gone to a lot of trouble to resurrect beginning wizards in an advanced main group or a secondary group, because as a human player, for example, you often run into werewolves and other weapon immunes, paralyzers of one sort or another, or other back-row nasties that either won't be hit by weapons at all or enough weapon damage in time, and some back row guys, like Deaths, are immune to weapons too. You often have only the first round to kill them before they can wipe out your group. In that case, a second wizard, upgraded enough to survive the first round of damage himself, can spell the difference between victory and defeat.

Yeah it seems that's the way forward.
What I'm struggling with now is defeding newly conquered cities in the early game. Am I over extending myself when I have 2 or 3 cities with 3 entry units in? I worry then though that if I don't grab those weakly defended ones early on they'll get swallowed up by demons/undead or whatever and make life harder still.

Capture towns to deny resources, healing, and mobility to the enemy, to lure him into exhausting his resources, and to encourage him to feed you easy experience. But generally not to hold. Especially in the early game.
Even if you don't overextend yourself financially, you will eat up a large financial safety cushion by populating your captured towns and defending/resurrecting in them. That money would be better saved, or spent on developing a workable secondary group, which is much harder to do after the beginning of the map when all the easy enemy creeps and groups are gone. And also on the occasional resurrections or heals that might be necessary to get mines or goodies or towns before the enemy does. Clearing creeps out of the way, grabbing early treasures, and spreading your influence is much more important in the early game than holding territory.
Towns should generally be let go, especially at the beginning of the game. They are mostly good for giving you income as their influence turns mines over to you without your having to plant rods, and to sit in for healing.
They can also be very costly and difficult to defend against an enemy's even halfway developed stack. One of the things you want to do is take away the opportunity the enemy has to develop his stacks by gaining experience. If you leave weak groups and towns around for him to attack (and since your main stack isn't in them, towns/cities will almost always be weak), you are just handing him free experience to turn against you later. If you develop the towns much before you have killed a healthy portion of the enemy's stronger groups and established a strong command of your territory, you will only make them harder to recapture later and increase the money or time you must spend on healing and resurrections.
Compare to letting him take the towns. Often enemies will grow your towns for you, saving you hundreds. As you gather power, those better developed towns will let you claim resources without planting flags on them, another huge savings. Contrarily, enemies will often flag nearby resources, which gives you an opportunity to make them waste their money by scooting in and deflagging them for free. They'll also waste money and give you free experience by generally leaving only a few weak troops to guard their captured towns. Especially if you move in early enough after the capture. Boom easy free experience that requires little or no time for healing, and you get the town back. Plus you heal for free that turn anyway.
So, towns are a cash sinkhole for you, and a way to trap enemies into regularly blowing their own money and manpower. That reduces their ability to make more serious incursions and rebuild stronger groups significantly. Leave a town open once in a while to encourage the enemy to try to take it over. When a weak group comes, fight it with your secondary group to build up its power. It will take a good while, but you can make a secondary group that's actually worth a darn for killing more than thieves that way. And sometimes let them take the town while you send your secondary on assassination missions versus thieves, low-level groups, and rodplanters. Then come back for more easy experience reclaiming the town. Which they may have been so nice as to upgrade for you. Make towns the enemy's time and cash sinkhole instead of yours. You should concentrate on building experience, getting the good items and cash laying about the map first, denying resources, and beating down enemy groups before they get enough experience to slow your expansion to a crawl.

The only way to "bring them back" is to load a saved game.
Regards,
Vorax

Seeing how we are talking strategy here I'm in need of help not getting slaughtered. I'm on the second mission with the dwarves and I need to quash the rebel towns. The last town up top has a full stack of level 6 guys to fight my party of 5 maxxed at level 4. I lured the baddie group out with a fodder group which died before even getting a hit in, but I did get to blast them for nearly 100 damage to start things off. I was hoping that would give me a nice advantage but it hasn't. I get absolutely murdered.
I've stacked potions and buffs and everything I've been saving up and nothing seems to help against that stack. It's almost unbeatable. I'm sporting a warrior leader and warrior duder up front. Two crossbowdwarves in the back and that shaman dude that gives a 75% boost and cure(which has been useless so far). No AOE but plenty of heavy DD's especially on the second and third revolution because of the shammy buff.
Where did I go wrong? I practically coddled this one group and got them fairly maxxed for what I knew was going to be a hardcore battle and my plan has fallen flat on its face. I'm not sure what else to do.

If I remember the map correctly, you need to put a decoy group near enough to the town that the enemy will come out and fight it, but far enough that they can't go back to town or attack your main group.
Then you cast as many offensive spells as you can on the OP group, buff your main group to the max, and you should be able to beat them.
That's what I can recall doing anyway.

Yeah, that's what I did, but it didn't work. They still stomped me into oblivion. I built my group with Direct Damage (DD) guys and one buffer. Should I restart the level and focus on Area of Attack (AOE) units? I did DD units mostly because you are fighting giants so you need to be able to focus heavy damage one one or two enemy units. Then the last fight you are stuck with fighting a bunch of hardcore AOE enemies in full groups. Your tactics from the first 85% of the level go kind of out the window. I was able to make it work up until that point, but then I get to them and no matter how much artillery I provide it just doesn't soften them up enough and their AOE units just rain havoc onto mine. That and they are able to level up to 6 and I'm stuck at level 4.

If the enemy force contains several powerful AOE units then you'll need to do enough damage with spells to get their health low enough that your ranged units can take them out in single shots, then also make sure that your ranged units go before the AOE units (usually not an issue, but you may have to use a spell to boost your units initiative if for some reason the enemy units are getting the first shot). Also, if you haven't got enough damage-dealing spells to take them down to low enough health in a single turn then you might also try to send in a few sacrificial units first (loaded up with quick units that will at least get a turn before being wiped out) to deal the extra bit of damage necessary before your main force attacks. Just make sure that these units don't provide enough experience for the enemy units to level up, otherwise the entire effort is a waste.

I loaded my save for that mission. My group is exactly the same as yours, and I managed to beat them again, so that's not the problem.
After casting all my offensive spells, using a Valkyrie and a secondary scout group I had (with a lvl 2 ranger hero, and some other lvl 2 units) as sacrifices, 1 of their mages was dead, and the rest was killed in one hit by my crossbowmen.
Are you using summons? The Valkyrie is quite powerful. Sacrificial parties can be good too, although as DarrkPhoenix said you should make sure the enemy group won't get any levels.