Not off to a great start, I have only one city I have mountains to my back but desert all around, by the time I got a pioneer all the good land near me has been gobbled up. I did manage to take a newly build ai city not sure if I can hold it.

Playing like this is a different beast, I also choose for my starting rare path of the Govenor for a little extra challenge.

However fielding an army at the beginning of the game is expensive and time consuming, so I'm behind. Two Empire nations sensed my weakness and delared war. I've barely defended my capital once against an AI Champion stack of doom. Now I know how the AI feels when I show up with 6 heroes on his doortstep. One of them had that posined dagger, that was not fun

I've had to make smart use of my tactical spells and my overland spells. I had to use a Tremor spell to stop and advancing army while rush training some troops for a few turns.

All in all though very fun so far! Its a different game than I've normally played and the bad start means I have to play smart to stay in the game!

Sounds quite interesting, and should be fun to try out.

I think I would do it slightly different though. Simply setting the rule of no more than 1 Hero per army. There will be no stack of doom, but it will give some flexibility toward doing quest, and killing of monsters.(could also limit the hero number as I please)

what benifits are you experiencing with the Sovereign in the city most of the time?

This is a lot tougher as the AI has quite a few Champion stacks of doom roaming around. I've also noticed them using my custom units from other games, which is cool, but actually pretty deadly for me, as I made them to fill in the gaps while waiting for the next unit type to pop.