I will try extreme next.

I beat both extreme and ridiculous equally easily... sad, but at this point, my babies never get beyond about 6-10 years old

Once you understand the game mechanics, there are just a littany of ways to obliterate the AI.  Deinedez said it best.  There are about 10 ways to win every single time on the hardest difficulty with just forward momentum alone.  Half the time I get so tired of conquering and managing all of the extra cities I'm heaping into my empire that I don't even bother building in them.  So basically to compound the problem of the game being too easy, I have to build up each city I conquer, one tiny square at a time, to make use of them.  Ugh. 

I'm not saying "oh play Extreme! I bet it'll be hella easy!"

I'm just asking the "pros" to play on Extreme and give feedback if it is harder or easier than Ridiculous. Or if it is noticeable at all. You can still stomp the AI.

4 games on extreme so far here, no difference, it's easy like any other difficulty setting.

- sov's self suicide
- enemy factions don't have any defence
- can declare war on all factions i currently have contact with, and i still win with ease
- i only need one stack to wipe out the enitre world
- i can keep lots of citys/settlements undefended, if creatures attack a city then i actually don't even care
- i stop building up my citys quite soon in the game, there is no point

To be honest, i do not notice any difference between normal and ridiculous other than the mass spawn rate of creatures.

PS: I'm not rushing either, i'm a builder, but at an certain point it makes no sense to keep building up.

PPS: more details, i always play on large maps, with all AIs, set to the correct difficulty setting, so if i play extreme world, AIs all are as well set on extreme.

Now, you all do realize that setting the difficulty to ridiculous only effects wolves and spiders and such?  and NOT the AI?  Right?

the problem i am having in my game is that the AI just puts masses of troops in its border towns.  i had a 220 CP stack and the closest kraxis city had 280 CP stack in it.  i looked just past it(i could see what was in all the cities even the ones in fog of war, bug i think, or atleast hope it is), they had maybe stacks of about 20 CP each.  i just walked on past this settlement and took the next one.  easy as that.  i look forward to when the AI gets better, i know it will.

There's a lot of room between better and good here, however. But yeah, hopefully over the year or so there'll be a lot of improvement.

I still regret preordering for £35 when I'll be playing barely any of it.

You don't have to rush or use anything but basic tactics (build troops, move them towards enemy, obliterate enemy), and I personally don't use any known exploits, like loading up troops with tons of jewelry or kits (stuff that should get nerfed).  I build entirely normal troops.

And I do have fun beating up the AIs - it's just way too easy.  If I chilled and built up even more before finally attacking, it would be even easier because my troops would be exponentially more devastating.

At some point, AIs must be thrashed.  Either they declare on you, poach something you want, demand something ridiculous, look at you funny - whatever it is - they must be punished, usually by me exterminating them like vermin.

I'm a builder too but there just isn't that much to build.  I can get thru the tech tree pretty quick, to the point of having the end of tree techs in several trees and branches (some branches don't have much to them or much point to them either, but I still research the crap!), and be researching/learning level 10+ spells.  Once you get rolling in Elemental it's like a runaway freight train.

I usually have so many resources rolling in that there's not much point in bulding anymore, except to build troops, which leads to "hey, my troops look pretty kick ass and designing parties/squads of uber troops is actually kinda fun - now to try them out on something," which leads to, wow, I just rolled an entire AI empire in 10 turns and now have all these new beefy cities producing even more resources.  What next.  I wonder.  Rolling the wandering monsters isn't all that interesting because all you ever get out of it is gildar you don't need - and after slaying everything in sight just to have repops almost immediately, you start thinking, maybe I'll wipe out some mobs where there is a point - the AIs....

The builder side of the game just isn't compelling enough for me to want to sit around and build for ages like I would in GalCiv2 or Civ.  In those games, I want to colonize every possible planet or build cities in every empty space, build them up, tech up, THEN finally get around to figuring out how I'm going to win.  This is missing in Elemental to me.  In elemental I wanna build a tight, defendable empire, build up a little, then expand thru violence.  Totally not my style at all.

This is what disappoints me the most. The AI will eventually be fixed, but the strategic, empire building part of the game is much too shallow compared to Civ or GalCiv. I hope they add a lot more features to the strategic aspect, because I'm a builder and I hate going to war until absolutely necessary. But right now, going to war is the only thing fun in the game.