So I can't seem to get past my first shard. I've been playing as a commander a few times and once a scout. I read the strategy page that said commanders in the early shards are not good because the maps are small. However i'm playing at beginner level and i'm finding my problem is not using the commander as my initial hero. My problem is I conquer some provinces and then the 'Local Lord' heroes show up and come into my provinces. I attack them and defeat them, but they leave behind massive 11 unit armies of tier one units. These are hard enough to defeat, but on top of this they AI seems to have PLENTY of money to resurrect their heroes repeatedly no matter how many times I kill them, and its usually two heroes with two armies. So how do I fill MY provinces with 11 units of armies as fast as the AI does? AND have all this money for resurrecting heroes. We're talking maybe at most 50 turns in. SO frustrated. :( Something else I should be doing instead?

That gets much easier after the first few shards when you get better guards. Till then all you can do is wall off some entries to your kingdom either with outposts where they get stuck sieging, or with strong one off contracts like adventurers. Also it is recommended to have 2 heroes capable of defense.

I strongly recommend using warriors for the first few small shards - a leveled up warrior can handle those 11 units on its own which really helps. Commanders are much more useful on larger shards. Eventually after you've conquered a few more shards you'll get access to more powerful guards that change the game a bit

Yes, on the first few shards you're seriously underequipped.

It's like fighting with sticks and stones against stealth bombers and navy seals.


You have the following options:

Use a warrior (as mentioned above)

Do some massive scouting and find a magician's shop where you can recruit gargoyles, a forest where you can party with faeries and hire them or even hope to tame a unicorn.
I hear that harpies can be recruited as well. You can even hire trolls if you manage to defeat them first. By the time you can defeat them you probably don't need any trolls but anyway.
Other than that, an Alliance with the dwarves or elves might give you some seriously powerful tier 1 units.
Alternatively you might be lucky to find some level 4 spells like "dragon form" or "summon devil" for an archmage. But a commander won't be able to use those spells for a very long time.

i agree with all the stuff the others said
a warrior ist probably your best choice for slaughtering those nasty crowds
another choice would be a scout he can more or less shot them before they reach him once you get him past level 7
if it is your first shard you won't have the outpost yet - but you can try to fight your way as fast as you can to the enemies castle -capture all surrounding provinces and put guards in them - then you can take your sweet time to do what ever you want - thats what i did on the tiny shards (oh yeah your first shard should be tiny- on a small one you will encounter 2 AI enemies and that will just screw you over)