Step 1: create character using Travelling Merchant, Paige, Squire, Forced out of Home (8 leadership for no charisma investment!) Inheritance is unimportant, dump some points into looting.
Step 2: choose to start in khul vara
Step 3: search the marketplace until you have a 'crushes through block' weapon (b or p, it's not about prisoners)
Step 4: find yourself a juicy foreign invader party
Step 5: spend 10-20 minutes circling the 70-100 man group swatting them down like flies because they're too slow to catch your courser and have zero ranged ability
Step 6: rake in the easy XP (lvl 15+ in the first battle is pretty much a guarantee), take the hefty battle aurums and the 50 renown, fill your bag with loot to sell/equip
- Repeat steps 4-6 until you're an unstoppable one man army, then go spend your vast fortunes on enterprises and mercs, then steamroll the map.
I know it's cheap, but once you know how easy it is, it just feels like crippling yourself to -not- get your level up early this way
I'd suggest throwing some big ole pikes or long spears into the foreign grunts equipment pool to add a high level of risk to taking them on so early, same goes for the wolf knights tbh, but they're not worth as much xp as invaders, so i tend only to go for them once my looting's high enough to have good wolf drop chances