Thanks that helps. 

Thank you. 

Why is healer a Defender trait? I should be a Commander trait.

Thanks for the replies. I started with the Scenario but I think I'll start a sandbox game later today. 

Q) In the Scenario, I noticed my Sovereign had a limited army capacity. I imagine that those locked slots for more troops can be opened in sandbox mode with certain research or attributes?

Thanks!

Take a look at the research trees.  Look for the techs that have a little "^" symbol.  That symbol means researching that tech opens up (unlocks) a space in each of your stacks for one more unit/hero.  These are scattered in several research trees.  A related thing is the techs that allow you to train larger units.  They look like a button with several stick figures.  Each of these unlocks a larger size unit.  Note that larger formations (units with more soldiers in them) take longer to train (see buttons at top of training window).  Two 'bugs/features' currently exist (as of v.75):  First, when a unit is in friendly territory (or a city) it can spend guilders to increase its size.  I think additional metal is also spent for the additional armor.  The bug is that no crystal is spent if increasing the size of a unit that uses crystal made items.  The second bug/feature is that the newly increased size unit keeps all its experience.  Basically, the new soldiers added to this unit take on the experience of the unit they are 'joining.'  The crystal issue is, I am sure, a bug.  The second, I guess, is a matter of opinion. 

edit, by bad, actually in .75, it does cost crystal to upgrade units that use crystal... was looking at old notes....

Oops! Found it. I feel dumb now. 

Okay one more query: how the heck do you build cavalry?  My capital is a TOWN and it has the horses resource. my 2nd city is a FORTRESS with a barracks but I don't see any horse units available to build. 

Do you have to design your own mounted units?

Thanks in advance!

Thanks but completed the research and built two improvements on the horse resource iirc. Are there more than one tech i need to research? Ill check again in a bit, though. 

I seem to recall being unable to train mages. I checked the technology, saw it wasn't researched, and set it as my next research. Many turns later, I had forgotten about it, and went to train mages... and I couldn't. I checked the research, saw it was there this time, went back, and found the mages in the middle of the stack, where I wasn't expecting them.

Be sure to check the list carefully, it's easy to miss them when they dress up like everyone else.

I'm not sure exactly what you have, so I'm going to be very basic here.   My apologies if it sounds patronizing, that is not my intent.

First, I'll make sure you have horses as shown here in the very top-left:

I have 192 horses available.  If you have more than a dozen or so horses available then things look good.  If you have 0 horses there's some problem (something not researched, your horse resources aren't built or are still building, etc.).  If you have only a few horses you may need more than that for the unit (but the unit should still be in the list of buildable units...).

Next, try to design a mounted unit.  Pick a city, select "Trai"n then "Design" then "New" then "Equipment" and select horse as seen here (horses are under the "mount" bit, I tried to post a bigger screenshot which included the horses but the forum didn't like it so had to reduce the pic to this size...):

Give the new unit a horse and nothing else -- no weapons/armor/traits/etc. -- then "save" and name the unit ("temp horse" or the like) then close out Design.  By not giving the new unit any weapons/traits/armor/etc you don't have to worry about having crystal/metal/etc., just horses.  The new unit should have a horse in its picture.  Go to your city then "Train" and see if the new unit "temp horse" is available to train.  If it is then everything is working fine and you must not have a default horse unit available (I tend to Hide all default units and create my own so I don't know if/when default horse units appear).

If "new horses" isn't available, then there's a problem.  Let us know that and we'll see what's what.  I'm hoping this isn't the case as I'm not sure what the problem would be...