Just rebought this game, I played it when I was a sprog years back adn was rubbish. And still am! I went through the training, yet I start a new game and the computer just flies ahead of me so quickly! Any help?

I speak about the second game. It's more important, I think, to develop early a good economic system. In this way you can buy some good hero to lead your armies. You have also to use the spies to control the enemy and steal some castels from them.
They are anly few generic advices, I hope can be useful

My god, have noone a clue how to win vs. even the retarded computer?

Fact:

The AI is... an AI, so it's incredibly easy to abuse it. For instance in Seven Kingdoms AA (the first game), if your enemies send a force that is too large against your base, you can just sell and instantly rebuild the fort they are aiming for, and the armies will be recalled back to base. This way you can easily stall the computer practicly forever.

In Seven Kingdoms 2, it is a bit harder to screw with the AI, but for instance in the campaign, if you get a fast unit, for instance mongol cavalry, you can divert a huge chunk of the enemy army just by attacking and running away and keep doing it, essentially reducing the AI's firepower. If you play skirmish, winning is so freakin' easy. Let's say difficulty is at normal (100), this should be fairly easy. Remember to tax all your towns at 40, loyalty in towns increase ALOT faster from 30-40 than any other loyalty range, effectively raising youtr tax-income. Just remember, if you kill civilians, your towns of the same nationality will take about 2 loyalty off per civilian killed. So if you know you're going to kill civilians (which you almost NEVER should, it's completely unnecassery for a human player), then remember to make sure to have like 60+ loyalty in all the towns of the same nationality.

If you get a natural resourse nearby at the start: Establish the mine to make sure you get the natural resourses. You can either establish a factory and a market to start gaining economy, but that often provokes attacks from Frythans, so sometimes it is smarter just to keep the mine and build 4 inns and spam combat units. Remember: 1: Combat spies are usually lower in combat, but are also fairly cheap. Use them as fodder for your more important units. 2: Never recruit a unit with more than 99 combat skill unless you either are desperate and they are the only ones available, or you got a lot of cash, or if it's a hero with an ability you find useful. This is because units with combat or leadership above 99 double in prize compared to the ones beneath 100. So a unit with 99 combat may cost 700, while a unit with 101 may cost 1400. Examples of useful hero abilities:

Mongolian, Viking, Celt, Japanese normal heroes with combat ability exceeding 200 when you hire them, will most likely have the Ice Pulse special ability, the most imbalanced and strongest ability in the game. Carthaginian Elephant cavalry can also get this special ability. This ability gives the hero a chance to freeze any enemy in a huge area around itself if it successfully hits an enemy, the single enemy that is being hit will not be frozen, but if you have two heroes with this ability, you can in fact freeze all enemies in the area almost permanently as long as the heroes keep attacking.
Just remember that if leadership is higher than combat on the hero, that hero almost never has special combat abilities.
Another useful ability is the ranged attack deflection ability. This ability allows the hero to periodically repel all missile attacks back at attackers. Heroes who gain this ability includes Persian infantry, Greek infantry, Carthaginian infantry, Greek Cavalry, Roman Infantry and possibly Egyptian infantry.
A third special ability is the splitshot. Although devastating as it usually recides in combat-heavy heroes, splitshot only works for ranged attacks, and if melee'd, your hero will often go into melee as well. You can circumwent this by manually target units that aren't in melee range, or run around charging melee units, however this often ruins most of the split shots effectiveness and requires alot of attention from your part, which you rather want to use on other things.

Your Seat of Power gives you a random blessing every time it is full if you click the "invoke Greater Being blessing"-button at your Seat of Power. This is very useful in peacetime. You can save before invoking it and load if you get a blessing you're not happy with, just remember that each blessing is randomly assigned to an in-game DAY, which means if the date is january 9th and you invoke a blessing, the same blessing will occur if you load the game from an autosave and you invoke the blessing on january 9th.

You can also cheat a lot with the use of greater beings. The two biggest abuse-factors are:
Baal-Hammon, the carthaginian Greater Being. He summons an earthquake around the desired location, damaging buildings and units alike. 3 quakes kills any building, but each quake costs 150 health points, and he has 400 max, meaning you cannot instakill your opponents buildings in an area... Unless you abuse and cheat. Like this: You can have nearly unlimited earthquakes from Baal-Hammon if you invoke the earthquake, but when he is casting it, give him another order, like a move order, and interrupt the animation. If done correctly, he will invoke an earthquake without losing hp, practically spelling oblivion for the desired area as you will have nearly unlimited earthquakes.
This way of cheating can be used for several greater beings, among them:
Isis can be abused using the same trick. If you do it correctly you can practically fill up 10 villages to 100 in one summon.
Mars can be abused the same way to give unlimited boosts to your generals' leadership abilities.

You can win almost any skirmish practically outright if you pick Persians, train up 2-3 forts of normal Persian infantry, research Military Methodology to the max and just gathering them. Almost nothing can break that, at least the AI doesnt know how to do it. Beware of Baal-Hammon, but also beware of any damage-based greater being. This strategy also works with the mongolians. Tech up to Mongolian Cavalry asap. Get Military Methodology, then train as many of them as you can: Practically unbeatable by anything as they are both ranged, powerful and among the fastest units that are in the game (only beaten by Kerassos and their Leopards). Since you can stay alive economically just by killing units, a well trained 24-40 Mongol Cavalry will beat anything and still keep you economically afloat.

I have about 30 more strats I could've shared with you. Just find imbalanced units and strategies and abuse them. It's pretty easy after a while.

Also, Kharsuf and Exovum are clearly the strongest Frythans effectiveness-wise. Easy way to win with Kharsuf: Tech to Wilde Lishorr, and start spamming them around the map. They will automatically spread like a forest once you have a couple of them in an area. In the end the entire map covers itself with new Wilde Lishorrs. They are not controlled by you, but they attack any unit that isn't Kharsuf, practically ensuring your victory.

Another good strategy is good use of Mage Tor's for Exovum. Get them to 70 combat level to allow for their ranged attack, and from then on you can kill pretty much everything, and if an army is too big for you, you can just engage it and use Mage Tors to freeze them for some easy pickings.

Avoid: Celtic Deruvids (Druids). They suck.
Viking Axe Throwers are also pretty weak, but not that much.
Japanese Ninjas suck.
Mongolian and Persian Cavalry both rock, but Persian infantry is stronger than Persian cavalry, making them less used.
Carthaginian Elephants are powerful, but slow and clumsy. Easily killed by strong ranged units.
Indian Elephant Archers seem like they have a huge load of HP, but they are slow, weak and die surprisingly easily.
Roman units, bot infantry and cavalry, are below average, but the cavalry isn't too bad. The infantry, however, is the weakest in the game in my opinion.
Greek cavalry is quite strong, stronger than Norman cavalry, but slower. Greek infantry is easily killed in melee, but good against all archers.
Viking infantry is quite strong, but not enough to make up for the puny Axe Throwers.
Chinese infantry is powerful. Chinese monks are weak.
Norman infantry is average in strength, and the same goes for their cavalry.
Celt infantry is strong, but Druids are the weakest in the game.
Mongol Infantry is strong. Mongol Cavalry is the strongest special unit in the game.

Minotaurus are weak as crap, but can field a solid economy with their alchemist tors. Still weak even with a good economy though.
Bregma are above average in strength, but Bheemas are really useless and so are tarmes. Better to just make more Bregma.
Grokken are powerful, but the fact that they take 2x2 hexes instead of 1x1 makes a world of difference, as they are extremely slow, surroundable and clumsy.
Espinez are strong. Their contraptions equally strong.
Kerassos are weak, but the fastest units in the game. Below average all in all.

Recommended race for newbies: Persian.

whut
Ninjas are awesome, they start with a ranged attack and, unlike ballistas, have a melee attack in case the enemy get near. And they look good. Nothing beats having a ninja general called "Hanzo".
Same with Kerassos, they're weak, but they have easy access to a ranged attack, unlike Exovum who needs, what, 70 combat skill to unlock it?
And despite what the manual says, the Chinese monk don't have a ranged attack. Damn manual, even the HD one is full of lies.


Now, some other things :
-as far as I know, the only way to heal siege units, whether they're humans or frythans, is to garrison them,
-garrisonning siege units at full life isn't really interesting since they don't benefit from the general's leadership, you should only do that if you have trouble with your mouse and want to be able to select your army with a right click. Otherwise, let them out,
-of course, with enough combat skill, the units get an alternative, sometimes better attack. For special units, you need to research it.
-theorically, anyone can become a general. Practically, you'll get massive loyalty drop if your units are more skilled, either in combat or leadership, than your general, hence why you should give new generals an empty fort and have them training their own troops. Ironically, having their own troops to command makes them more loyal. Not that I mind, Crusader Kings 2 traumatized me,
-catapult are bad, except to light porcupine once they reach mark 3,
-ballistas are good, they're cheap, they're good-looking, but they're fragile,
-spitfire are melee siege units, and are fragile. They can be used to light porcupine,
-porcupine are rolling exploding barrel. At level 3, they're cloaked, which allows you to put them all around the place. To make them explode, select a m.III catapult or a spitfire, press ENTER and right click on the procupine. They cause damage on a 3x3 AoE, but causes other porcupines in a 5x5 AoE to explode. Ideal against neutral lairs,
-unicorns are improved ballistas, with more damage but slower rate of fire. I think they ignore armour or something, but I'm not sure,
-cannons are expensive, good-looking, causes AoE damage when they hit (no friendly fire, so it's awwwwwwwwright), and are awesome.
-attacking neutral lairs unleash the fury of 16 veterans fryhtans upon ye. Aim for the ordo, smite him, and clean up the rest, but keep the building intact for your inexperienced general. By the time his army destroyed the empty lair, he'll have a leadership of 70.
-before ordering an army to move out, build at least two buildings around the town, either tower of science or war factories. Workers have better loyalty, which keeps them from revolting even without a general around to keep them in line.
-given that highly-populated town grow faster than small towns, don't hesitate to capture some towns only to move everyone back to your capitals.
-spies are good. Very good. "Create an incident" can totally change the game. Too bad it's impossible to have them cloaking and then attack a neutral lair to unleash pissed off fryhtans at your enemy.
-you shouldn't really need an espionage school, unless you need counter-spies. Get your spies from the inn.