So I've been enjoying the game, sort of screwing around getting a feel for things so I'm playing on easy, but I just can't seem to tell how I'm doing. Has anyone gotten a feel for where you should be in what number of turns in regards to number of cities, tech, magic research, etc? I look at the kingdom stats of other nations and they're a bit ahead of me in terms of generating resources and money but about equal in buildings so I don't know if the other nations are just having better time finding money resources.

I'm looking for opinions of when in term of turn numbers you should be moving from single man units to party sized, to company and so forth. I've been building cities as I find good spots for them but in games like this with random maps and with no gauge of experience of previous maps I'm not sure if I just ended up with a bad starting location. For example I've yet to find a metal site.

I realize that much of what I'm asking is dependent on my specific situation but I'm not sure what factors are most important. I have a custom sovereign with all magic choices so I've just been running the sovereign around with a posse of summons doing exploration and killing random mobs. I haven't created any regular units aside from pioneers and caravans because the units I have available don't hold up to summons and all my money and other resources are going into city developments. If I were at my computer I'd be more specific, I don't remember the turn number. Sovereign has two kids who are still babies, is in her mid twenties, all research is about level 5 with adventuring lagging at 1 because I didn't want the critters more difficult while I was still growing.