Everything about this game is wonderful.
Been playing Dom 3 with a melee Pretender god. Healing is too damn hard. N4+Astral2 = can construct a healing chalice, but other than that you're probably shit out of luck. I'm not too familiar with 'Early Age', but assume its all nations from Dominions 1
OK here's how I see this going down;
Coldcrow will blow all his early gold spamming weak cheap goblins and conquer all the provinces around him ASAP, then start summoning or going for choke points, then slowly build up some higher tier units.
If early Ulm is anything like mid/late Ulm, Chef_Hathaway could have some trouble to start if he doesn't have access to good resources. If he's smart he's got a magically versed Pretender who can scour his provinces for magic sites, and will invest in defense to take advantage of Ulm's high per-unit strength.
Mortmal is playing the super-fun blood magic route, which is also super powerful late game. Mictlan has trouble spreading dominion, but IDK if that's a problem since his Pretender should basically be holed up the entire time searching for blood sacrifices or casting spells. With a few strong provinces and patrolling units he should have a very high throughput of consecrated virgins to place upon the sacrificial altar. On the other hand, couple concurrent sieges will shut him down.
Johannes has a very squishy game ahead of him. Using sheer numbers, the apes and monkeys attempt to overwhelm their opponents with pathetic stabs using sticks. Easily countered by a decent stack of heavies or archers, but he might surprise us with his Nature magic.
Fire, Death, and Astral. No huge dependence on undead units, Ermor is on par with late age Ulm, but can pack some serious fire mage action, which can shut down sieges and 10 or so mages can really do some damage in a big battle, but he might be hurting for gold if he over-depends on them. GO PANZERTOTER YOU CAN DO IT! Like Ulm, invest in defense.
Jagreenlern can use heat scale to his advantage by starting with Dominion set to Heat 3 (Which grants him MORE points to use at chargen), which can then be invested in raw Dominion. This creates a synergy with Heat 3 which enables you to give provinces adjacent to you up to -30% supplies for enemies but -20% for you (As opposed to -10% for them and 0% to you at Heat 1). C'tis has some heavy hitting units and a decent amount of variety, units are also cheap on resources which means this is a very reflexive nation, I'd recommend he do a lot of land grabs, then when he gets a big stack he should pillage his way to an enemy fort.
Mortmal v2 has an interesting choice, it would have probably been my first choice for Early Age. It's a blood-magic capable nation who also has some heavy infantry, but the real fun comes if he can hold on long enough to make gold a thing of the past. More patrol + hunt orders for his strong-holds, with a lot of blood/fire mages being pumped out, bolstering research. If he is smart, he has invested into Magic 3 Dominion so he can pump out low level fire mages into a who can research/smash as needed, and will spread out some forts so they are right next to each other.
EDIT: Just finished a quick fail play-through as early Abysia. Couldn't keep a patrol stack up long enough to keep the constant waves of enemies off my back, even with recruitment, summons, and blood hunts (Can't blood hunt when under siege). Maybe investing more heavily in ~70 defense before turtling would have been better, then again, maybe I just need to land-grab more at the beginning.
JohnTheRevelator playing Ur. What? Must be a Dom 4 thing.