I spent a couple of hours on my Paladin game this morning, and managed to get up to level 7 very easily by clearing out most of Scarlet Wind. A lot of people don't like Glory but as a Paladin you have a lot of green runes to spend, so I've maxed that out already, and with the second level of Grand Strategy, I'm up to 2700 leadership already. Consequently I'm ahead of what I think of as the 'difficulty curve' in that the enemies on this island are mainly listed as Weak or Slightly Weaker, which is not something you'd normally see on Impossible.
I've had in with the Blood Shaman so I've switched them out for good old Inquisitors. The Engineer on the other hand is a very useful unit for strategic play. Coupled with Paladin's Second Wind ability, you can get two stacks of droids out on turn 1, and then Shock Grenade on turn 2. Orc Trackers are my only orc unit now due to their toughness and ability to summon. Royal Thorns are always useful and you can turn 50 of the green thorns into 1 on Debir. This is a kickass team for the early game and there's little or not chance of ending up with losses. I've discussed how to play this style before so I won't go through it all again, but suffice to say that Engineers are a very welcome addition to the mix.
Scarlet Wind has about 4-5 of the harder fights left on it, and I'm nearly at level 8. I'll mop up all but 2 of those fights easily (the map fights will be left) and then it's on to Bolo for the easier fights there. Then it will be necessary to take on the map guardians for access to Rusty Anchor/Verona.