dwarven control; best early army!
 

since I have yet to see anyone mention my favorite early game army, I decided tell you about the beauty of the dwarf army,
now many have mentioned how easy it is to use guard droids with split repair droids as all you use; my army is not that.
I use inquisitors, engineers, guard droids, arch-mages and usually royal snakes for debir. after debir I sub out the arch-mages for repair droids (once I have 1st level guardian spirit); and sub out the royal snakes for green or black dragon, depending on what I am fighting.
here is what makes this army cool; with the light beam of the guard droid you can blind any creature with night vision, and engineers can create guard droids; with 2 of them you can keep 1-3 night vision creatures frozen for as long as you want!
night vision creatures include both beholders, were and regular wolves, miners and foreman, hyenas and devil-fish. 15 to 30 percent of all mobs in the game will have one of these creatures; and the early islands it can be up to 50 percent!
add in the shock grenade of the engineers and you have imo the best control army in the game.
healing is no problem for the droids (I love the engineer), and the inquisitor can heal the rest (phantom helps there).
I have few problems making no loss with this set-up (and none once I am at mid-game and have a large stack of inquisitors and phantom).
to make this set-up really insane try using the set of the young techno-alchemist (plus 20% droid damage and more stronger droids/engineers from its parts).
edit: phantom helps to guarantee the 2nd guard droid. other wise restart battle and try different things to get it (mostly just waiting with engineer).

Thanks for the strategy, I am kind of new to the game and love gathering knowledge before I choose my path, this surely helps.

Engineers are found behind the second island and at first you don't have enough leadership for them. I begin with three shooters, bowmen, priests and inquisitors. I fill the two last slots with any units that I get only one and that are big enough to survive melee at the first stages of the game. After that I avoid melee units and take shooters and units that produce other units whenever I can: engineers of course, Royal Thorns (they are always available), Royal Griffins, Druids and Demonologists. With them and spells I create a barrier to protect my regular units. Don't forget to develop rage abilities, your Pet Dragon will soon do huge amounts of damage! And don't forget to search for the two maps found on the first island. Sometimes you can find Bolo map without a fight and go there, run past the Viking ship to an altar and get level 3 for free (training gives you level 2).

Yeah but I kite all the map 1st, get like lvl 23 without any fights and then I begin to fight as some folks here suggested.

All right, to each their own, but is it fun to start at level 23 on Debir?

Yes, my brain thinks im forward and thats fun to me. I reap the fruit of my hard work at lvl 23 on Debir.