Best Races for Noobs
EA Tir Na Nog has powerful sacred mounted warrior-mages that can take provinces by themselves with enough research and good sacred troops. It lets you play around with the new Glamour path and can get you into playing with ‘thugs’ or strong combatant commanders. Glamour feels really ‘magical’ as a magic path and no one has more of it than TNN.
MA Ulm is the classic that’s recommended to new players, but it doesn’t really have sacred units to speak of, so I don’t like it as an intro nation.
Marignon is an excellent choice. Buffed hugely from 5 to 6, they’re a sacred nation par excellance and have fairly limited magic paths, letting you focus on what you want to do. Just take a bless that looks awesome, some production scales, and start pumping out brutal holy knights.
MA Pyrene is apparently extremely powerful, rivaling Mari. They have heavy cavalry sacreds too, but while their cav aren’t recruit anywhere, their mages are better. There’s lots of fun to be found with flying, shapeshifting catgirls. It would require you to learn how blood magic works, but if you wanted to start learning blood, it’s a good place to start. You can piggyback off of your good sacreds and air magic until you figure out a blood economy.
I’m surprised EA Arco isn’t mentioned yet. Very straightforward expansion plans, and (for a returning player, especially) you can keep mystics viable for a long time. Glass cannons, but you can build up an easy Gifts from Heaven cadre, and once that’s no longer enough, pivot into communions. It’s my first choice whenever I’ve been away for a while, or a new Dominions comes out.