It's important to challenge your perceptions when it comes to what works and what doesn't.

You'll note as you observe kingdoms around Utopia a few different core structures. It's ego that makes us say "orcs were good whatever age and thus the top kingdom with orcs won that crown."

My last experiences in The Faery Circle were the same as they'd been for ages. Being a full faery kingdom in an age the build was nerfed was not a disadvantage. I had 3 generals and -10% pop and ran an attacker. In fact, I could say the same thing about orc mystics or elf clerics...
It doesn't matter nearly as much as you're led to believe.

The hardest thing to do is to get players to believe it. I didn't just believe, I knew. I knew from experience.

I'm sure a lot of guys look at the races in The Virtual Kingdom and think there are better formulas with avians or orcs, or why heretics(?). That's experience and killer instinct. The difference is if you've put yourself in nonnegotiable situations you tend to learn how to get out of them, and not by talking.

Here's what happens and why guys enslave themselves to the bot. Leaders are trying to retain players, and there will always be cry babies. So being a mechanical thinker you start diggin the bot and all the crap it tells you. This is the evidence you use to accidentally legitimize mediocrity. You won't engage your logistical betters and always engage logistical turds. How do you learn? I learned by gaming for 40 years and embracing challenges as a means of developing innovative methods. - Those guys that randomed me, because I was a logistical turd, are the ones that suddenly found the math didn't work. I'm not bragging or take dark pleasure in it. I took these things as noble challenges and respected my enemies.

No, I'm not a great player. That's what befuddles me. Whenever I've had someone sit my province they make massive changes. I guess they're better at this than me, but I never saw them do what I do. They do cool stuff, like micro the sciences and levy the wages etc. I'm much sloppier in those functions, but I can smell foundational cracks like the earthy aroma of spring water. My frustration was always in my kingdom not seizing those moments. Glory I've known, they shy away from.

I've long held a challenge idiom in Utopia to not attack unprovoked. This is fundemental to how you get good. Think about it; I could've gone on randoming hapless players in little kingdoms reveling in my strategic bullying. But what I did was counter the most powerful first. You need to see them in action, in doctrine. We don't play this to let a robot tell us we are losers.

Y'know in D&D we didn't reflect on what level we were to avoid dragons. If we knew of a dragon that required slaying we got on to how to do it, no matter what level we were. This is important to the enjoyment the game itself. Sure you have pals in kingdom and that's a good reason. But you can keep those friends and enjoy the wind at your back to.

It was for these guys that I illustrate this Virtual Kingdom. I don't guess, I know.