AI agressivness in 1.00 is denfinately not looking at power rating's.

two recent game experiences..  both on challenging

 - first game I was consistantly ranked at #2 but about half the power ranking of Kraxis which had one city on my North-west border. AI never attacked me and I was able to build and take out all the opposing empires for a diplomatic victory. It was a challenging game but not bad, I was taking my time and trying to get as many dragons into my stacks as I could just for the heck of it.  I suspect it was because while my Power score was low I had two high production cities that could easily crank out troops on a moments notice and had a massive buildup of resources (except for horses... no horses that game at all, and I was a little scarse on crystal) I was never in any danger of getting seriously challenged by the AI and probably could have handled a dog pile fairly easily if it had occured.

Interesting note it was the first game that I've "lost" by the other side getting a tech victory. I clearly had the upper hand and could have ended the game much earlier but was having way too much fun role- playing. Suddenly i get the end game screen and the announcement I lost due to the world being Conquered by an opposing faction... which was ridiculous as I was by far the biggest faction and was allied with two other factions. On reload back to the mid game and replaying I noticed Resoln had started building the wizard towers or whatever they are called... likely in the previous game they had succeeded in building all of them.  (no warning BTW that they were working on them or nearing completion.) hmm thats probably a bug eh?

anyway

Second game also on challenging completely different story.  CRAPPY locations, lots of them,  but no standout production cities. Was forced to rush Magnar to take control of cities that if developed wrong (which the AI of course would have done) would have lead to dozens of Strong, and Deadly monster stacks getting released onto my butt. by turn 40 I had 8 cities none of which were in particularly good locations for growth or production. spammed spears and archers to keep the power rating up which I did successfully. I was consistantly the top power rank right up to the last dozen turns or so, but it was a weak shell, lots of low power units but nothing of substance, I was constantly at the edge of my resources stockpiles, None of my cities produced any essance to speak of so my magical power was extremly limited. Essentially despite my power rank I was in a much more vulnurable position than the previous game.

Dogpiling ensued... despite being less than half my power rank Kraxis declared war. They wern't all that powerful either and I was fending them off playing cat and mouse with outposts in the wilderness between our lands. Then Yithril, only slightly more powerful and completely out of my Line of sight, declares war... followed two turns later by Resoln (also out of my Line of sight ) which was at the time at the bottom of the power ranks.  War was handled for the most part and undercontrol. I though I was going to pull it off especially after Kraxis resigned, (they had built a city near a storm dragon which rampaged through thier lands.. they never should have build the city in the first place but I digress)  Then Magnar started spamming outposts in the wilderness just outside my borders and I suddenly found myself fending off,  2 obsidian golems, 3 Lord of the flame armies, 2 drakes and that storm dragon from Kraxis.   I was caught out of position and Resoln walked through 4 of my cities in short order (razing them instead of conquering them interestingly enough) ... I didn't last much longer after that.   

I've cast Shadow World next to AI cities before (as in, a square directly adjacent to their city) and seen the resulting spawns wander away from their city constantly, never ever attacking. I really hope a lot of this stuff is tracked down and stamped out.

on the contrary.  the AI did exactly what it should have done... somehow it recognized that despite my high power ranking My empire was a paper tiger covering up fundamental weaknesses in my economy and defense by spamming low cost units to artificially boost my ranking. 

 I thought that was fixed.  the change log mentioned that a bug was fixed that allowed monsters to roam across the map at random, apperently even after getting pop'ed they are suppose to stay within a certain distance of thier origional lair. 

so far my latest challenging game playing with the latest patch I havn't any monsters comming in at random... I know there are at least 3 deadly "lord of the flame" armies wandering around to the north of me in the fog that are occationally destroying AI cities and outposts but I have yet to see any of them in my territory.

I did have a random event the dumped a clambercoil dragon near one of my cities... that made things a bit scary for a bit but fortunately one of my heros had a scroll that allowed me to get there in time with a powerful enough stack to stop it...  barely.... (only my Sov lived) I thought I was screwed but one of the other monster spawns I managed to get a hero stack to gifted a sword powerful enough to have a fighting chance against the dragon. I burned through 1000 mana in about 6 turns and sacrificed 80% of my fighting force to stop it though.  but while annoying it was WAD.

Around turn 60 I did have a random lair appear out of nowhere.... but I couldn't repeat it on a savegame so I attribute it to be a wierd anomaly.

I think a burned-out city stamp or some other visible remnant of a city should show up if monsters completely destroy a city.  Rather than having the land simply salted (does this still happen?) so you can't build on it again, leave visual evidence of what happened.  Maybe make it a resource where a new nearby city can salvage the nails from the ashes at least. 

As it is now, we really don't know what monsters are doing to the AI, but if evidence were left on the map, we could see, either through scouting or map reveal, if monsters are razing cities.  Seeing ruins dot the landscape would also add to the flavor of the game.

i should add that i would prefer cities be "damaged" (or otherwise able to be reclaimed) rather than destroyed but that may not be doable at this stage.

I agree entirely. Not sure why Stardock haven't listened, people have been saying this for ages. It is slightly better now that only some of a destroyed cities area is unsettleable and the monsters don't appear to roam quite as far but these are just bandaids on the real problem.

Similar things happen all the time to me including 3 or 4 times in my current (and only) game since release. For example just to the north of me there was a reasonable settle spot with 2 essence BUT a Fell Dragon and another Drake within the area. So I deliberately didn't settle it and left it for later, then somehow Magnar got a settler there (not sure how, the area was totally enclosed by hills and my territory, it is just conceivable that it snuck by without my noticing but I also suspect a bug with AI movement). Nek minute the Fell Dragon completely ignores Magnar's settlement and razes one of my best cities. The only reason I'm still playing is that I was able to reload from two turns earlier and got lucky that it went elsewhere (although it is still roaming and still hasn't hit Magnar's settlement), otherwise I would have given up on the game.

Its wrecking the game, the AI's best tactic, in fact the only way it really threatens me on Expert, is by settling or outposting beside Dragons and Ogres before I can handle them.

Note: I have seen the AI lose a city in this situation so it does happen, but the point is that it should happen everytime! The disturbed monster should attack the city or outpost that disturbed it then go back to its lair. Problem mostly solved, the AI will get punished for awakening them and the player doesn't get screwed. The only remaining problem I see is the AI would still be wasting those nice settle spots because they would be salted after the dragon razes them, to solve this Stardock just need to make it that settle spots are left completely undamaged by monster razing.

Not challenging or discounting anyone's input at all (devs need to hear your experiences and thoughts) but might recommend using a cheap moveable unit to kite dangerous mobs away from cities. I say this because in my original playthrough of Master's Affliction mod, I had good success in getting the mobs to chase after the units when they appeared to be moving towards my cities. I also used outposts heavily with warden upgrades to calm the borders. The combination seemed to work well.

I think we have a bit of a ways to go, but I think at the same time you may be a little unfairly harsh. We still haven't even got a large patch yet. The average player will probably never play on ridiculous. 

In my first 1.01 challenging game I had an ogre shaman army from the wild-lands turned up and destroy two of my cities and everything I could throw at it.

The first city was 14 tiles in a direct line form its lair on the other side of a large lake.  The AI was building near its lair but I noticed no loss of its towns or outposts.

Unfortunately I did not think to save the auto saves when I started a new game

Nakisisa