Hints, Tips, & General Help

These tips are mine:

Try to take your great temple within the first few turns. Doing this will allow you more turns to gain resources. Make sure you take it in the first 7 turns at most, so you get the followers from the end of the week. This gives you a better chance to get a head start on Balkoth.
Usually you can take the temple with what you start with. If not, go to a level 1 cave and beat it. Try not to lose any hit points. You should get enough experience to help you out. If you still don't, train a merc or two in the barracks. You should probably get a cavalry unit. Now you should be able to beat it easily.
A great way to get lots of resources and units is by taking other faith's temples. You get an heir who is already powerful and can be a great asset to your faith. You also get their stronghold, which gives you the extra resources per turn. You can now train their units to complement your own. I took over 5 other faiths in 33 turns as a life warrior lord. I had over a thousand of each resource by this time.
Mines are great to trade to make a faith neutral to you. Once they are neutral you can take their temple, then they'll swear fealty to you. Then you just retake your mines and trade them to the next faith.
In battle, keep your infantry near your missile units for protection and use your cavalry to flank the enemy missile units, then clean up the rest of them. Use your mages to take out the enemy champions, especially their mages. They can cause some serious problems with your units.
Use your scouts (brownies, imps, bats, cats, seagulls, hounds, mites, and dragonflies) to keep an eye on enemy units, or to trade with allies to get good units. Scouts have great movement and good sight, so they are good for exploring the map.
When trading with the computer, if you want good units, offer mages. The computer loves to have mages. They'll give a level 5 unit for a level 2 or 3 mage, even if it has no spells.
Trade often with allies. Even if it is only a few crystals or gold, you will keep your knowledge of that faith accurate and when you want something, you'll be sure they have it.
Watch out when renegades come by. They love to raze your buildings. Just set a unit in the building, and they will leave it alone. Otherwise, you'll have to keep re-upgrading your buildings.
A good way to slow down Balkoth is to kill all his units, but not him, then run away. Then raze all his buildings (barracks, guild, mage tower) and leave. This will take some time for him to recover from.
Once you've got a pretty powerful army, go take some towers. You can get some really good scrolls out of towers, but sometimes you get crappy ones. I've gotten regeneration, heal, turn undead, and fireball.
When playing as air, use the fairy slingers or thieves to sit over areas that other units can't walk on, such as water, crystal patches, etc. The enemy won't be able to hit you, and you can pick them off.
When using Chaos, get polymorph self as soon as possible. I once fought and entire army and won when I changed from 3 chaos mages into 2 fire dragons and a pegasus. Hardly even got hurt.
When using Fire, get inferno. I can take out entire armies easily, and not even lose the mage. I once took out the earth lord, 2 death parties, and two renegade parties with champions, all with the same mage.
When using Life, get lots of archers. They are so powerful when upgraded. They can usually start firing once a battle begins. Try to get some order knights or water heavy cavalry to protect them.
Using Earth can be difficult, especially when facing Life archers. What you need to do is to make a zig-zag pattern toward them. Most of their shots will miss. Once you are in close, you can rip up their archers.
With Death, get spawn cave. You can rapidly increase experience by defeating these caves. In no time you can have Balkoth level 12 and some other champions level 10.
You can see a screenshot on the screenshots page of what I did. If there is a lone unit wandering about, you can trap it by surrounding it with units. I had the fire warlord attack a mage tower of mine on a village, and he won. (I let him.) He didn't enter it, just stood there. So I decided before he messed with it, I'd train about 25 level 10 fire mages with inferno. Scary enough there. They all pop out, surrounding the tower, and the lord. He is stuck in one place and can't move. I'm sure he could fight his way out, but he is alone and must be afraid.

These tips come from John Messinger:
This is a fun little trick to do when a large army is approaching a poorly defended Order Stronghold. It requires at least level 2 mages (perfect if you've conquered it or just had a steward for a few turns) and the Justice Spell. When the army is almost upon you, start training Mercenary wizards like mad. They are quite cheap, and the real cost would only be if you kept them all for a subsequent turn. Group them in threes. Attack the enemy, and focus Justice on their missile units first ..... then attack them with your staves until you die. This will result in some damages enemies (a level two mage does around 4 damage to 4 units with his Justice ... always aim for a unit around several others!) and the penalties are only -1 ale ... you actually get +1 fame for your valiant stand. Keep in mind that Justice takes 4 mana so don't use forced march to reach your enemy .. make sure you can reach them. You can repeat this procedure until you feel they are weakened enough .... then attack with a few "keeper" units that you have on hand and finish the job.
Steam Cloud Warrior .... though this spell says it only affects the caster, it lied. As of version 1.03 beta this spell can be used, and quite effectively, on your amazon warrior once she is in the thick of a battle. A steam cloud will grow around her, and anything hitting her will take three damage! She will not loose any hit points from the spell itself. A quicksilver can enhance her chances of hurting more enemies, too.
Fury Fire ..... When you know someone is trying to run .... target their foremost runner with this spell. Then, do whatever you can to detain the troops in battle ... as they run .... they'll all run through the fury fire on their way out ... just keep dropping them in the thick of things. Also quite mean when combined with Sands of sleep, if you have the luxury of both mages ..... sleep 'em ... then toast 'em. Also works with Blades of Fury and I'd imagine with vortex as well.
Never underestimate the power of a well placed headwind spell. It's wonderful for detaining runners and also for slowing down missile units.
When bartering, giving a player a bunch of spells you KNOW he'll never get to use is an excellent way to improve diplomatic relations. Ex: Here you go, Mr.. Balkoth, a nice Ray of Hope, there's a good chap, back to your stronghold ..... or, Here Mrs.. Fire Sorceress, this handy Wind Mills spell will make us better friends .... and it costs you nothing. Offer at least three spells for best results, and maybe a bit of ale or crystal. Keep politely refusing their future begging for a mage, too.
Entanglement is the best way to make an aggressive enemy warrior wait his turn ... sic your missile units on him!
Enemy mage being annoying? Creating rocks around him usually returns the favor, And a high-level hand of fate will often kill him. You can also use possession or an animation spell to snare a nearby unit into putting a sword in his kidneys.
When you possess an enemy champion (or lord) you don't get his artifacts after he dies ... so use this with care. It is best used, in my opinion, to take an enemy thief over, since he's already by the other champions, and use a quick subdue on that mage or warrior.
When using the staff of animation, take extreme care not to animated more shades than you have room for after the battle. Doing so will screw up your armies giving you a bunch of shades and your champions will disappear .... same thing goes for skeletons, too. And a nice trick with that ..... kill an enemy behind a large clump of archers ... then makes them bones walk! It's a wonderful way to wipe out a bunch of annoying faeires, elves, and slingers. The other missile units seem to hold their own a little better against one shade .....
Certain artifacts function differently in the hands of certain champions ..... the most stunning example of this is the ring of anything. If a chaos mage lord has it ... it is much better than the description. It will also cast: Detect Water, Commune with Nature, and once I had a icy coffin with unlimited uses! I froze and killed an entire squadron of skeletons, about 16 of them! It may very well have other random spells .... give it a try. Also, if a Chaos warrior has a shield of righteousness, the leadership spell will not work. (don't ask me why ...)
When facing an enemy mage, particularly air, life, order, and often fire .... just sit back and wait for them to cast all of their helpful spells. DO NOT engage them or the spells will last longer. But if you just stay calm and act paralyzed .... they will burn out all of their spells and they will wear off in about a minute ... and then you attack them! Exceptions to this are when a sorceress casts a firestorm or worse right off .... she has to start with the immolations and frenzies for this technique to work.
When fighting high level necromancers, under no circumstances have a valued champion attack him first move. The necromancer will almost always toss out a lost soul or dark shadow, or if he's too weak, a Golgotha's gift, on the first unit that targets it. If no one targets it, it will either G.G. the first unit in front of it, or start dark shadowing missile units. Wait unit a lot of armies are upon him to send your warrior after that necromancer.
A high level huntress can destroy whole squadrons of elven Calvary and staffmen by herself provided they are level one or two. Have her steal from small elven parties whenever possible ... and if they catch you just kick them in the head a few times.
Get to know the circumstances under which the AI will give you a win. For example, high level earth parties always defeat life parties if you have at least one warrior, and mages will not lose any mana. Also, damage is evenly distributed among the units so you won't be left with odds and ends. NEVER AI it if you are a life party versus even one dwarven warrior -- you'll be sorry! High level life parties usually defeat fire units in the AI if you have plenty of archers.
Don't ask my why, but sometimes going in and out of your capital, bringing up the Intelligence report, and then exiting that window will eject renegade parties from your buildings, buying you more time to fill them up with baby sitters.
If you can capture a village with a water mage tower ... get one! Those healing potions are indispensable to warriors, and if you have a priestess who can cast teleport artifact then she can brew and send 'em out as needed.
Know which scouts can kill others .... dragonflies beat bats every time, and also kill seagulls. Imps usually can kill anything, though sometimes a hound can fight. Keep bats and seagulls out of combat .... they are the weakest.

This tip comes from Andy Wang
When using life: Make as many archers as possible and train them very high. Then when you upgrade your wizard's tower to level 3, then go to the great temple and make a Pegasus. Put this with your archers and it'll make a formidable shield and fight off enimies, while your archers pick them off. This tip comes from William Black and Justin Quaglio Take a unit down to another faith's capitol , and leave him there for a while. Then if the other faith parleys with you, say renegotiate. Then pick all the units and resources you want thin press cancel. Then press accept. Then you will get the stuff that you wanted for free,but they will hate you after that.