1. Manage your mana to your advantage. Water mana can be very useful; it lets you start terraforming with adepts and enables water walking at second level. Depending on your map this can let you get in a good surprise attack. Also, try to specialize in either summoning, buffing or offensive mana in the early game - you can branch out later. Remember that multiple sources of the same kind of mana improves your summons.
2. Use terraforming to your advantage. If you have fire mana or sun mana you can make life miserable for your opponents by starting forest fires, turning border territory into deserts, etc. You can always fix it later (i.e. when their empire is your empire).
3. Protect your heroes. They are very powerful one-on-one and very vulnerable facing stacks. I never use certain heroes (Yvain) in direct combat. I rarely move Corlindale out of my home territory. The proper use of combat heros is taking down high-level units that might soak up three or four of your normal units in one go. Do not leave your heroes exposed around assassins. Do not risk heroes on attack values of less than 90% unless you're desperate.
4. Scout early with naval units, it's the easiest way to meet new people. Land scouts get killed, naval scouts meet empires. Once you get caravels, take personal control of at least one unit and sail it around the world to get the circumnavigation bonus. Finding isolated islands can net you otherwise unobtainable resources.
5. Acheron and every other high level unit can be dominated with a few catapults and melee fighters. See previous about protecting your hero.
6. Specialize in the early game, diversify in the late game. FFH buildings are too expensive to build everything at once. Having one core city for each unit type can really help you mass-produce armies in the early game. In the late game you won't want to waste micromanagement time on which city produces which unit, so slowly build up your capabilities.
7. Get ready for a real fight if you declare war on the orcs. Warrens are lethal in the attrition game, and ogres are high-powered champions. Do the same things you do when fighting other empires - just do them a LOT.
8. Don't use March of the Trees in the late game when playing as the elves, it will torpedo your economy. Losing a city is often preferable to using March of the Trees (unless of course you're really desperate).
9. Balseraph Halls of Mirrors and the dark elf black mirror artifact will ruin your day. Be careful attacking Balseraph cities with really high level units, and track down and kill the unit carrying the black mirror if at all possible.
10. If someone else builds Duin Halfmorn, declare war as soon as you are able and kill him. Werewolves are potential nightmares in the late game.
11. When Loki takes one of your cities, declare war on the Balseraphs and kill him. He will try to occupy the city for several turns - this gives you the opportunity to surround him and take him down, especially since your cities presumably have road connections to the rest of your empire.
12. Do not throw away summoned units/low-level units on powerful high-level units. Very high strength units like dragons may not even be damaged by ten or twelve skeletons or tigers - but they WILL gain experience from them. Use catapults or spells that automatically reduce unit strength by a certain percentage (maelstrom) to weaken the big daddies.
![[to_xp]Gekko](https://civfanatics-data.community.forum/avatars/m/74/74677.jpg?1475248346){kind=avatar}
