Actually, (almost) everything is explained in this game. You just have to click through the menus and look at the tooltips.
- how to get more grain .. you mean food for population .. i don't know, I want my cities to level up.
-- he didn't get the difference between grain and food in the first place, then he ddin't know about buildings that give more food, not to mention things like upgradable tiles on strategic map that give food
If you look at the city details, you'll see stats for Growth, Population, Food, and Grain. When you found your first city, the Grain is taken straight off the map, so it's self-explanatory. Food says something like 60 Food from Grain (20 per Grain) - 20 population = 40 grain. If you look at the level bar, it says 20 population, 30 more to level, capped at 60 due to food.
If you look at the build menu, it'll list all the buildings you can build, and if you look at the tool tips, for example for Garden, it'll say 5 more Food per Grain.
- why I am producing so slow .. becuase you have high unrest .. why .. because of taxes ... okay, but here? because your city is not connected to the rest of the territory, ... how could I've known that? ... do you know that heroes reduce unrest .... no
Again, in city details, the tooltip from Production will say something like 4 Production, -1.3 from Unrest, 2.7 Production total. The tooltip for Unrest will say something like 37% Unrest, 22% from taxes, 15% from not continuous to capital.
I agree it would be nice to explain that parking your hero will reduce unrest, but it's rarely ever relevant. Your hero should be constantly questing, not parked in a city.
-- he wasn't properly briefed on the relation of unrest/taxes and they ways to counter it, sneaking cities toward themselves, using outposts for continous expansions seems arcane in this context
The Unrest/Taxes stuff is actually explained in the tutorial. They tell you to lower taxes to increase production.
Using outposts to connect your territories is a perfectly valid strategy. Snaking across 7 tiles is incredibly slow, and outposts will usually be faster.
I think the devs assumed that snaking is an advanced strategy and that beginners don't need to know about it to pick up the basics of the game. After all, it's turned off by default in the options. Either that or they never even thought about it as a strategy. It's useful to know, but it won't make or break your game until the higher difficulties.
- how is this diplomacy working, everything is denominated to gildars? ... no becuase the gildars themselves can have different perceived value
I'm not entirely sure what the question is. I think the fact that the game will tell you exactly how the AI values stuff makes trading much more intuitive and transparent than in Civ.
.. and what is this influence ...
There's no real answer You don't actually need to know the answer to this. When it becomes relevant, it should be obvious (for example, when you unlock Henchmen with Relias). And when it's not relevant, it's not relevant. Knowing when to stockpile Influence and when to ignore it and when to trade it away is definitely useful for formulating advanced strategies, but you don't need to know this when learning the game.
In fact, I just read Tuidjy's guide and read that Influence has some side benefits related to diplomacy. I've played 2 games and never knew that/never needed to know that. Then again, my first 2 games were with Relias, so Influence was always freely available.
what's the difference between monument in city and monument on strategic map?
Again, when building the Monument in a city, the tooltip will say +1 Zone of Control, upgrades to blah blah blah. When you click on a Prestigious Location, it'll tell you to build a Monument to gain +1 Influence per turn. I agree that it's really confusing that the two buildings have the same name.
