Endless Legend

The best beginner faction is the Wild Walkers, who get an easy questline, production bonuses and the best Tier 1 military unit in the game. Afterwards the Vaulters for straightforward science-based play, or the Broken Lords to learn the importance of rivers and oceans. Avoid the Necrophage, Roving Clans and Cultists until you have some experience.

You can only have 1 City per Region. You can access every Strategic Resource (titanium, glassteel, etc) and Luxury Resource (dyes, spice, gold etc.) via Extractors.

Districts Leveling! For every two Citizens in a city (or one for the Necrophage), you can build a District in a hex adjacent to your city. Each District reduces city approval by 10 and any food on the hex by one, but increases production, science and influence output by one. When a District has four others surrounding it, it grows to Level 2, providing a +15 approval bonus and increased outputs. Essentially, this means making a "core" of level 2 Districts before expanding towards Anomalies and vital terrain features is the best way of expanding a city.

Rivers and Ocean tiles are vital, as there are a multitude of improvements that improve the Dust, Food and Science output of those tiles. Try and get access to them whenever possible.

Although research paths are very flexible, you will generally start the same way every time - Seed Storage and Mill Foundry, swapping the two depending on what you need more at the moment. You'll probably want to get the new resource extractors when you hit a new Era, and work in some science improvements to prevent research taking too long.

Titanium and Glassteel are good enough weapons and armors for most of the early game, especially if you get a Tier 3 Titatium/Glassteel tech. You'll never get enough Hyperium or Mythrite to support armies unless you're the Vaulters, so just give your Heroes those weapons.

In terms of unit upgrades, prioritize Damage a little more over Attack, and try and get Initiative as high as possible.

The Wild Walkers are probably the closest to a standard 4x game, relying mostly on stacking industry to get ahead.

The Drakken are also fun for beginners as their units are very durable and they are diplomatic powerhouses, able to force peace on warring factions, making a diplomatic victory that isn't a bloodbath possible.

Whichever faction you choose, prioritize their storyline quest. The missions unlock some really nice rewards like research and hero units that are otherwise unavailable.

Play the tutorial and read the in-game documentation when in doubt. There are a lot of details and mechanics that are different from the standard 4x formula.

Resources are much more balanced now after some patches, although buying out units with Dust is still a great strategy if you have some good dust-producing cities (and the linchpin of the Broken Lords, of course).

Note also that if you surround one district with a certain number of other districts, you can level up that central district, which gives it more bonuses. It's often worthwhile to do this, even if one of adjacent hexes are kinda bad, but absolutely branch out to resources and whatnot.

When combat is initiated, reinforcements can come in from stacks a certain distance away, so be aware of that. They'll trickle in throughout the fight, though, so you won't have to worry about having to deal with a horde at once, but you'll have to deal with them eventually.

I don't know if the AI does it, but if you don't kill off a Broken Lord unit, they'll be at full health again since they just pay Dust to heal, instead of having to wait for time.

How you expand your cities is really important and is something you should think about early on by at least skimming a link like (removed bad link).

Most of the things are similar enough to Civ to come pretty easy, but those weird city bonuses and penalties were something I wished I had known before my first game.