Racial ability: "Preparation".

Since training is limited to 20 units per week, I think it makes sense to focus on training only paladins from monks, if possible. Of course, it requires a lot of money, but you can sell unnecessary artifacts...

Yeah, you can start right from the second week, so you'll never be able to build a Capitol and are guaranteed to lose. In the very beginning, starting from the second week, you can easily train archers or zealots (archers are preferable, but zealots can be trained while playing as Laslo). 7 units each is quite good for the beginning and costs very little. There's no way to talk about monks, and especially paladins, in a short game and at the start.