Any tips for a beginning player?

First off, I love this game so far and it's a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to TW:W2 coming out. However, I suck something awful at this game. This is my first Total War game so I'm still trying to get used to everything. With that said, a friend recommended using Dwarves as a beginner so I did just that. I think I did pretty well for a bit until Chaos showed up and totally destroyed everything I had.

Is there anything that I should do as a beginner to get better? Or should I just continue to play as Dwarves until I get a good feel for the game?