Hiya!

Well I think the map and location of my enemies dictates a certain strategy.

If you look at the map it looks like a good solid strategy is to try to control the entire peninsula to the southeast using the home fortress as a choke/defense point to the north, and RUSHING down to the southern province selected on the map and building a fort there. That entire peninsula has only two land ties to it and there are a good number of provinces there! So if I can just hold that and maybe the provinces around my capital that will be a very solid position.

I've circled my three nearest neighbors, including an ocean race just NE of the peninsula which is a bit of a kink in the plans as they'll have sea access to the peninsula, but I think overall the plan is sound.

Meanwhile back in the first province captured (with rather high losses to Ferdinando's Footmen to lowly archers! Urgek's troops were decimated also) there are some tribal priest/mages available to hire so I'm immediately building a temple and lab there to start pumping those guys out for research. There happened to be an Iron Mine there so my resources in the home province have gone way up. I bought about 20 archers and 7 hypaspists to bolster the army which waited a turn to regroup. They're gonna have to go a fair ways with limited help from home.