hey any other advise??

i still cant make 'good enough' sprites..

huhu

For characters I use Poser for my animations and render them to 2D. I then load them into Paint Shop Pro to clean them up and make any adjustments.
It's not pixel art and takes a bit of getting used to but it's a good shortcut.
I use Unit Making Tutorial by utahjazz7 as a guideline. It's specific to CIVII units but the process can produce any size of unit.
If necessary you could always take the Poser renders as templates and pixel over the top of them. You'll, at least, have your dimensions and angles predefined.
Poser isn't cheap but you can sometimes find older versions on cover-disks and they gave Poser 5 away free last year. Daz Studio 3D has similar functions and I *think* it is still free.
As for buildings/objects I use World Creator .