How To?
 

Does anyone know where to find a how to for this game, I've gone through the tutorial but it doesn't really cover much. I'm just looking for basic stuff. Like how to take over other cities, then keep them, or bring up stats of those cities. I've pretty much got running my city that I start with under control as far as building and researching goes. What are the villages for too? Do they do anything? I guess I'm just looking for a good rundown of the game and how to actually play it considering the tutorial is...limiting.

Thanks

I could use a good starter guide and some tips, too.

All the rebellions when you take over a town is getting me nowhere and breaking my treasury due to endless recruiting.

Don't you have the user manual? You can download it here.

AFAIK villages provide grain and part of province gold income, so if you control only a city, it would starve when food reserves ran out. Because of the same reasons an attacking army needs supply wagons or they would start to starve almost immediately after crossing the border.
To stop rebellions, garrison more troops there, but remember they would need something to eat too (in an occupied city, army takes all the food it needs first and citizens have what's left, if there is nothing left they will revolt or escape to other cities).
Also keep in mind than unlike most strategy games where you can safely absorb minor independent cities, here you'll face a war against your powerful neighbors soon after you begin your aggressive world conquest, so careful planning is a neccessity.

Thanks. I figured out the rebellion problem after some more play time. Food, and the farms producing it, being key. I'll make sure I cap the outlying villages first. For that matter.. do supply wagons help the food shortage situation after capture (if your army has one or more)?

Overall, I can see a good game here but it seems a bit rough around the edges. For one, I had runaway alliances in my last game. It seemed like I could just ally and bribe for an alliance with most everyone on the map. This domino effect alliances worried me. Am I playing this wrong? Should I not forge many alliances to win? I'm not even sure if we can get diplomatic wins of a sort so I could have been short changing myself.

To win, you have to control certain provinces, this list is mostly unique for each major faction. If you can bribe everyone into alliance it may be a way to win if you have the money, but i think that being allied with some faction that controls a key province wouldn't count for a win so you'll be forced to break this alliance sooner or later. I'm not sure though, didn't play the game much.
Supply wagons provide (finite) supply of food if normal province supply is exhausted.

Also.. what are settlers for?

I think you can transfer populace from an overcrowded city to a developing one this way.

Thanks!

It seems like the AI is rather insanely aggressive on normal and hard difficulty. I've not been into building and researching much because I've been spending all my resources on recruits and fighting wars I end up losing.

I like the challenge but the gameplay ends up being the same every time.. build build build units to try fighting off the AI. I wouldn't mind seeing it's aggressiveness toned down or being adjustable so I could play more of the other facets.

Which faction do you choose? Game contains historical events in addition to ones that were caused by your actions, so Russian principalities face constant plundering by Golden Horde, for example.

I tried a Russian one once but most of these have been Kievan or Polish. Every time I start a game on normal, one of my neighboring principalities declares war within the first three or four minutes every game.

I barely have enough time to get my skills situated, send an ambassador, and start building. The initial orders and such are done then one of them comes after me.