@rude willie sanderson + companion Emperor Nero

You boys are pretty uncourteous for someone whom nobody asked for theirworthless opinion!

Do you really think someone is interested here in whether you call reloading cheating or not? We had an interesting discussion before, now with your fellow dummies you brought the thread to the street level, thanks a lot! "rofl lol" & etc, where are we here, in the kindergarten???

Using a gameplay mechanism that is a must for every game is definitely nothing any intelligent human would call cheating. It's so weird that a discussion about it is just a joke. You don't have to learn (though it would be healthy for your grammer, haha), but for many reasons you won't understand evil reloaders like me would beat you in any multiplayer strategy game. Just becuase you lack the experience of dealing with the toughest stuff there is.

If you cannot take part or contribute something of value in a civilized discussion please stay out of it. Besides, you are killing my joy (and those of others) to write anything here. And I am sure that was not your helpful intention, right ??

So I will say no more on that matter.

 

To change the topic, I exactly know the kind of players like the bright ones mentioned above, they mostly choose one imbalanced hero/strategy whatever that minimizes their need to reload, thats how they deal with it. They probably not even try to play on insane levels, no matter what game. Their kind is also the first to scream "nerf X!" when it comes to multplayer wargames (not talking of shooters, which i dont play, but maybe you know mount & blade or war of the roses). They choose the spammy 2-Handers, they build bats liek crazy fools in Warlock Master of Arcane, they choose the dwarven king in Battle of Wesnoth, they will play with 2 sinpers and 2 stormtroops in XCOM, they will captue wolves only in FE .

Ah, how i despise this attitude.

 

@Tuidjy:

 

Nothing against people like you who love to play ironman. I respect that, but what i view critically about it is that Ironman forces the player to restrain to what i call "cheap tactics", e.g. in XCOM using overwatch only, luring the enemies by running 1 move, and running back 1 move to shoot it. I have finished XCOM on the hardest level researching all technologies etc. and losing not one soldier, but honestly, without reloading i would have get rid of the game the first time i lost my colonel becuase i misclicked in these glitching 2 levels of an ufo (you know what i mean). Instead of climbing up like he should, my brave soldier ran straight 1 square in front of an enemy and was shot . These situations would mess up any joy i have with rpg/strategy like games, where you can consistently level up your troops.

Another savegame i lost due to overheating my laptop, imagine that after 30 hours of a hardcore campaign .

So say "welcome in the boat" to your wife please .

 

Okay, back to the game FE.

I think i can suspect what i am against at. I recognize slowly that these heroes on their own aren't that powerful. But i will mix them up now, in armies with 2 heroes and the troops to come, archers in the back, some tanks as well.

I also just fell in love with the spider ability "web", i will buy some more bows for my heroes

1) Question: what is the best hero path for an archer? Assassin?

2) enemy heroes: now that you say it, true, why does he have so much hp? and why has one of my level 7 heroes also 130 hp? Seems a bit to much, even with defender bonus. In any case, i will find a way to silence this archer king

3) juggernauts: haven't fought them yet, true, the capital is king Vega's. It was also yellow, so i thought it would be the same, haha . So what kind of troops would be good against them? How would a well equipped army look like to deal with most enemies?

4) randomness: I love it

 

 

 

 

I´m thirtyfive years old and would call myself an average intelligent human. And reloading isn´t bad, evil or anything. Its a single player game and you can do what you want. I do it myself sometimes. But reloading is cheating. Don´t fool yourself. Its like playing Ludo (Mensch ärgere dich nicht) and rolling the dice over and over again  until you roll the 6.

I would say Assassin. Yes. Because bows lower your initiativ, thats why i wanna have a chance for highdmg. when i´m in for a shoot. I don´t know if that makes sense. It seems i´m a very bad player, because i find the game challenging on challenging.

Yes, I know what you mean.  It happens because there is a valid destination UNDER the tile you are aiming at. You have to rotate the map so that there isn't.

When I am learning the game, absolutely.  And my games crash, just like everyone else's.  But one of the things I love about X-Com is that its ironman saves are rock solid.  I have had two hang-up in combat, but the saves loaded and continued flawlessly.

You seem to be missing the point. There is a very big difference between using reloads to learn the game versus using reloads to fight the same battle over and over without losing a single unit. Reloading to find out things like what abilities a monster has that you have never encountered before, or how strong an AI army is with units you've never seen is one thing, and I doubt anyone would fault another person for doing that when they are new to the game. Reloading because of a misclick, a bug, or a crash is also very acceptable. But the OP admitted to doing something completely different, which is that she can't stand to ever lose a unit or get one of the permanent negative traits on them, so she reloads every time she doesn't win the battle no losses. Then she goes on to claim that the game is TOO EASY, when she is deliberately CHEATING THE SYSTEM by never losing a unit or getting permanent negative traits on her champions through the use of reloads - this is what people are taking issue with.  Its no different than using an auto-win button for every battle, except it takes a little more time.

Everyone is free to play the game however they want, I don't care if you use every cheat in the game, but don't come to the forums bragging how you beat the hardest difficulty setting in the game on your first try while you stack the settings in your favor and deliberately cheat the intended functionality of the game. Without a doubt this poster would not have done so well without using reloads, if for no other reason than they wouldn't have known how to judge whether they can win a fight or not and would have repeatedly lost all their units and suffered numerous negative champion traits, which would have heavily slowed down the expansion of their economy and how quickly they could recruit all those heroes, resulting in a lower power rating and consequently more aggressive AI. This also directly affects how quickly your heroes level, the loot you get, whether or not a rampaging monster starts roaming around your territory and destroys one of your cities, and much more. This type of save game abuse takes so much challenge out of the game that the perceived difficulty is nowhere near the actual difficulty of that game.

Once again, play whatever way makes the game fun for you, but do not expect anyone to take you seriously when you start talking about game difficulty yet you haven't even beaten the game without suffering a death penalty or losing a unit because you reload every time you don't get a perfect victory.

Hey Syiss,

 

just to make this clear: i didn't complain about this game being to easy. I came here to ask why the AI lets me be, becuase THIS is making the game not challenging for me. I fi can play for days without getting attacked, where is the fun?

 

So Tuidjy and others clarified this questions, and together with my screenshots we could solve the issue.

 

What you bring to the table now is just your opinion. It's not ranked higher than my one. So please don't state it as a fact.

You really think i would reload every time something bad happens? No, i only reload when it makes absolutely sense.

Well, i save before EVERY move. If i plunder a monster's lair and get a crappy healing potion, i LET IT HAPPEN! Yes, i can be human! Human is human. Let it stay in my pocket, DeadlyJulia says.

But if i get a crappy rusty armor with 6 value, far too heavy and not even worth to be sold, no thanks . RELOAD. It just makes sense.

I have 40 heroes now, and you know what? I will disband everyone below level 7. Because they eat up my gold, costy 1 gold per unit. What is even worse, they steal the xp needed by my higher leveled heroes.

So after 20 hours of gameplay with not a scratch to these 20+ heroes that i will disband, i still have to say: had i known about the crappy value of too much heroes, i would have let them bleed and only reload for the strong heroes.

So its always a question of beenfit vs. costs.

I take XCOM as a recent example of the issue we are facing.

Do you think Tuidjy would ever enjoy really using his stormtroopers in XCOM storming the front? No, he will stay in cover, hiding as often as possible, or he will do what they all do to minimize chances of not hitting the target: run directly next to the Alien. And enjoy your 100% hitchance.

And all that only because he cant afford to lose his precious guys.

Am I right Tuidjy ? Archangelarmor for the snipers, fly up in the first turn, shoot everthing on sight. Ghostarmor later for everyone.

It is not a shame, i admit i would probably do the same if i couldnt save. But this is not furn for me. I like to really get into the fight, flank the enemy and set up crossfires. I am 100& sure you wouldn't risk that in Ironmode.

And this example also applies for FE.

If you play your pseudo-tough-noreload-game, would you ever start a fight with say 1 hero if you think the chances to lose are 95%? I guess not. Ill do that, and if i have a 5% to win, i will win the fight trying different strategies.

You would probably build up an unbeatable army and always attack weaker opponents. And thats what you always do. Your choice, but i think the learnig curve is steeper in my case.

So i am not cheating the system. Cheating means doing something not intended by the developers (even if the devs sometimes build in the opportunity to cheat on purpose). I maybe sound harsh in my post about the wild boys Emperor_Rofl and Willie_Treeson. that was not intended. Ja, okay, it was. That is because i HATE cheating and NEVER cheat, be it in real life our in a game. It just ruins the fun for me.

But enjoying a flawless victory if the ai cannot prevent it, well, that is a another story.

All the reloading wouldnt help if the ai would actually attack. But it doesn't? It seems to be clever not to, because it also calculates his chances, like you do before you attack. I attack first, and ask later. That is why i always win, you are right.

Yes, spam if you can't talk. You meet every definition of a troll yourself and don't recognize it. Sad.

Reloading is the granddaddy of all cheats.

Are you kidding? And leave them sitting ducks on impossible, where you could have 10 aliens in range?  Nope.  Hardly any enemy ever sees my guys on impossible, especially not on the enemy turn, and certainly not out of cover.  With the bonuses they get to hit&crit, this would be suicide.

Nah. Ghost armor for the assault, psi for those that need it, titan for everyone else and snipers stay one move behind and use squad sight. If the assault runs out of ghost, the snipers use scanners.  If anything looks too hairy... well, why do you think my heavies carry two rockets each?  The enemy does not get to use cover and set up ambushes, I reserve that tactic for myself.  And the support only does overwatch or covering fire, she is too precious to risk.

I know it's not what you would enjoy, but it is what I do.

But I do setup overlapping fields of crossfire, and I do sometimes end up in situations where everyone charges guns blazing because the plan got effed-up and a heavy is in a crossfire.  But no, I would not plan to do this.  It just happens because not everything goes my way. 

 

 

Hello DeadlyJulia.  We do walk a thin line trying to make the AI a challenge without making it play a different (and easier) game than the human player.  We also enjoy allowing the player to have a lot of control over the games setup.

In your case it isn't that the AI isn't aggressive, it's just trying to be as smart as possible.  And it may not be smart to gather forces and attack you if there are wilderness creatures it cant handle (and cant afford to thin out or loose forces) or it doesn't think it can beat you.  Most of the time when I see players commenting on either side of the AI aggressive arguement, those that havent built strong forces comment that the AI seems to aggressive, and those that have strong forces think that it isnt.  The AI doesn't do the same thing in each situation, it is much more liekly to attack weak players and leave strong players alone.

The game settings strongly favor your position.  Which is fine if that is how you would prefer to play (that's why they are there as options).  But increasing the monsters but making yourself immune to their more damaging effects still leaves them for the AI to deal with.  Making it a very tough game for the AI to survive in.  It wont be able to spread as quickly, build as many armies, gain xp and will liekly gather injuries on its champions.

Its similar to playing a faction with free champions and then playing with a lot of champions on the map.  There is no problem with you playing like that, but it does make it significantly easier for the human player.

Tropico has an interesting solution for this in that they have a difficulty indicator which takes these sorts of things into account.  Its similar in Tropico since you aren't dealing with the interaction of components.  But it does help communicate the effective difficulty of the game better than a slider does that is modifying certain values.

Saving and reloading is fine in my book, again its all about the game you want to play.  But it definitly effects the difficulty of the game.  It also feeds into the symptoms you are seeing because if you are always winning battles, not getting injuries, not losing troops and getting better items form loot then you are going to be gaining military strength much faster than a player that doesn't do those sorts of things (the AI).  Since your military strength is higher the AI is less likely to attack you, etc.

So whats the fix?  Hmmm...

I think we may want to think about the bonuses at the highest difficulty level (or add a higher difficulty level) to look at this.  I can definitly see why you want to set things up as you have, it's fun.  But you want the AI to be able to be challenging in that environment too.  Normally I would say that the answer is to raise your difficulty level, but since you are already at the top we may need to look at what Insane actually does and make it better suited for those sorts of environments.

If you can post your save I'd also like to check it out just to make sure my thoughts as to what are happening are accurate.  It could be that there is an exploit or AI bug happening that undermining all of this (oh the magic of random games).

Hopefully this helps, thanks for posting.

Warning Long Post incoming. Don't read it and complain you have been warned...

Being a hopeless savescummer myself let me say one thing about that (yea peeps hate me if you want for it I don't care. Labels like cheaters my ass...):

Developers don't need to. That is what difficulty levels are for (thanks very much by the way for helping to get the lower difficulties to a level good for the game / community at large I couldn't since I can't find fun in the game below expert really.). A true and tested 4 X concept in 4 X Strategy since Civilization 1 (there sure are bound to be others before him but that game got that soo right in basically any edition).

Allowing for a rare situation where in one aspect all tastes of gamers are catered for. Kudos to Sid Meier and the developers of the games that inspired him. One of the few things a good developer (or even average) can make right for everyone. (We strongly seem to agree on that the lowest difficulties absoloutely must be: Lenient on player mistakes. Winnable for new and casual players while still being engaging enough to be fun.)
And lets be honest the range of getting that one "right" is a rather braod one with the example of both Civ 4 and 5 as the upper and lower end of the spectrum which is barely acceptable when taken at the highest / lowest difficulties.

There are some 4 X games which did cater to the casual or the hardcore without much variance. And lets be honest most of them have been trainwrecks in regards to difficulty (with very few honorable mentions which got it exectly right and turned it into something positive that set them apart.).

So lets not discount a feature which makes such a point largely moot luckily (people need to learn to respect other peoples way to play really. Yeach how some peeps get worked up over it from both sides of the fence. Thank you Tuidjy for not chiming in there...).

Yea Jaggernauts are something of their own entirely even on riddiculous (haven't had the time to test insane yet). Everything else can easily be overcome in the first 100 turns if done right. very funny though to begile them and watch them trash each other to goo...



@ DeadlyJulia: Beastlord was possibly the best Sovereign Vocation in the Beta by quite a margin.
Now with the nerfs (Mana Cost went a bit to high imo 20-30 whould still be in line with the other go big traits) its merly quite powerful. Umberdroths and Hoarder Spiders are the things to get for punching stuff (droths are actually not just tanks thanks to Overpower). Widows are nasty because of their combination of Beguile (very powerful if the enemy is stronger than you are) and nets (mandatory to turn tactial battles against the AI actually tactical), Harridans offer a nice amalgam of hitting power and nets. Great Wolves are the kings of the horde buff and the various biters kill of neutral mobs quite well (with high ini to boot.)
The nice thing is thanks to the mana cost nerf collars are still nice even for beastlords (possibly even better thanks to an early game beastlord strategy leans heavily on beastly armies).
Best thing: No upkeep for the tamed stuff (you basically pay that up front with the prohibitive mana cost...)
Urgent advice if you go beastlord: pick enchanters to milk as much essence (for mana and research from meditation and revalation) out of your spots as possible. And do yourself a favor and pick brilliant. Its a mandatory pick for a beastlord souvereign (mage might be the class to pick but I find even at riddiculous defender is not to miss not least because of stun and the survivability extra HP generate.)

Hoarders are actually the best beasts to tame by far because they also daze the whole enemy army. Sadly they are very rare. Even more rare than Umberdroths sadly...  (and they usually pair up with a huge entourage of spiderling swarms which are scary all by themselves in the early game...)

Also best start with a Kingdom Sovereign with at least life Apprentice if not Desciple. Life 3 (Growth and Shrink as well as Water Hybrid Mantle of Oceans are actually more or less mandatory at those difficulties)

Also chosing the Quest-Map faction trait might help (there be harridans and other good beasts), can also combine it with a trait giving 50 Influence when completing a quest. Good to tame those slavering warmongering high-powered AIs.



That the AI doesn't attack initially seems to be the reason for what was your impression. It seems to be a concious design choice though (and there is a good and deeper reasoning for it) so the pacing of the game is maintained. The AI is actaully coded even in relation-metering to net be overly agressive early ("we are still settling modifier" for the first 80-100 Turns if I'm not mistaken. That is just what the are doing...)
In FE:
First you fight for survival against the world / all odds,
then you conquer the wilds (which at higher dificulties is more true for the player than the AI. Hey, you chose insane intentionally, so don't complain about fair. See the description of insane difficulty and act upon it... ),
then you fight the other factions for dominance.
Problem for your perception was: You picked master Scouts / Tarth which made the first 2 Parts rather moot (and is admittedly very powerful but a bit redundant with beastlord which turns the hostile environment into actual recruiting grounds / stuff for getting XP.)
Its not a bug its a feature.
One which is so fimilar to people who played the beta that they might miss it might be hard to grasp for first lookers. I'm sure you'll learn to appreciate it.
Unlike other 4 X here the AI just starts to get nasty beyond the span of the early game from Turns 1-100 where rushing is possible but don't expect to take out more than one or 2 AIs that way. (Save Dragons and Dragonkind...)

Unlike in Civ here early game success isn't everything. That I actually consider a great feature about the game. And the stakes are riddiculously stacked against you even at riddiculous:

Advice even if it hurts your ego: Start at expert and go up from there playing through the full game (meaning 400+ turns) to actually fully comprehend it. Better intro to the game and might lead to a less jaded view of the game

Also play a large world with 6 factions and lots of wildlands (and don't pick the trait / faction that lets you ignore the wild at the start) to experience what the early to midgame feel of FE is really about (sure it may be optimal but it cuts out one of the arguably most fun parts of the game). The expert AI will still be something more than a roadblock in Turn 300+ (wildlands don't scale to difficulty all that harshly being harder than usual at easy and more managable than the AI at riddiculous and insane.)


@ Kael: You allready did splendid work with implementing insane and Frogboy in making riddiculous actually riddiculous. No need to add extra difficulty beyond that just yet because of the initial! impressions of a FE newcomer optimiser veteran 4 X player that didn't fully grasp the scope of depth FE provides. Let them understand the game a bit better
(for example in how early super-expansion still won't win you any single game no matter what or how fighting the Wilderness can actually be fun or even a place to find some nice cheese along the way. DeadlyJulia sure sniffed out that cheese from a mile away as any good optimizer-mice whould do...
Please let me start next to 5 Umberdroths and 5 hoarders next game... Need to up that monster difficulty to insane while keeping the AI at ''merely" riddiculous. Eat that ridduculous AI I will wrench that victory from your cruel jaws. I swear. They will never know what hit em...)

I'm sure DeadlyJulia will find lots to like if he/she fully grasps what the whole game is about (I sense a player with simmilar preferences as me and let me assure you the opinion is an inexperienced one with regards to FE. No need to dial at the upper difficulties just yet. They. Are. Fine.
Challenging and below is a far more important construction site at that point in Time for the game as a whole. And there seems to be one hell of a lot of work to do there...).
Listen to what Tuidjy has to say in his threads about that and try to get it across to frogboy that actually working in AI flaws into difficulty normal and below is a worthy endavour even if it might bruise his super-AI coding ego... (Not liking all the nerfs in 1.0 actually but I'm sure middle ground will be found again... Heroic game has actually suffered a bit in terms of actual fun. Not sure if that is actually good for the overall fun of the game. But still much more polished than beta. Very well done. Kudos As usuall I like my shining unpolished gems more than the actual polished ones making me a very bad person to go to evaluate quality in a polished game.)

You mis-quoted, that was willie sanderson who said that, not me.

I agree that people are free to play however they want, I'm not trying to judge anyone. But DeadlyJulia certainly came off as both bragging about how easily she dispatched the hardest difficulty in the game, and complaining about how easy it was. Sure, she ends her post with a plea for 'helpful tips' on how to make the game harder, but it hardly masks what appears to be 30 lines of bragging/complaining above it. It didn't help her case that after being told by multiple people the numerous reasons why her game was so easy to beat, she continues to act as if she actually accomplished a win against Insane AI in a fair setting and that she can take on any challenge. Maybe she's just playing around, I really don't care, but to me she seems to spend more effort insinuating how great she is than honestly looking for ways to make the game more challenging. Nobody likes a braggart, especially when they are bragging about something they accomplished through (what many people consider to be) cheating.

 

@DeadlyJulia:

I apologize if this comes off as rude. I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm just being direct.

For someone who is so great at strategy games it really should be no mystery to you why the AI left you alone. Its a pretty common theme in strategy games that AI is less likely to attack someone more powerful than them. You played all of 39 turns of a single match before looking for answers about AI aggression on the forums? It took me all of 4 seconds to realize what happened in my first match when I got declared on by 4 AI within the span of 2 turns, and I'm no strategy game mastermind. You'll understand if I'm skeptical of your stated intentions.

And no, what I said was NOT an opinion. It is FACT that reloading every time you lose a battle or a loot roll doesn't go the way you want it makes the game easier. You cannot dispute this, it is not an opinion. You can try to dispute my claim that you are cheating the system by doing this, because I cannot objectively prove the intentions of the developers of this game (only the developers themselves can do that, by literally coming out and stating it), but I think you will find very few people agree with you. I think there is sufficient evidence built in to the game itself to make a case for what is or is not intended by the developers, at least regarding the usage of save games. There are penalties for losing battles for a reason therefore it is an intended mechanic of this game. You are intentionally side-stepping those penalties by reloading when things go wrong, which means you are not playing by the rules of the game, which means you are cheating.

I will say this again, I do not care if you cheat, play the game however it is fun for you. I am not judging you, I only joined this part of the discussion to point out the difference between using save games to reload after an unintentional or out of your control issue (such as a misclick, bug, or crash), and abusing save games to beat the RNG or avoid intended game mechanics. Its not the same thing, and the fact that the game has the ability to save/load games is not proof that the developers intended you to use it that way.

 

 

This is not how the game is supposed to work. I don't know how you can possibly not understand this. You are not supposed to get a good item every time you loot something. The randomness of loot is there to ensure you don't always get useful items. By doing what you are doing, you are making yourself more powerful than the game intended, you are making the game easier. And yet you come here supposedly to ask us why the game is so easy.

 

 

I have never played any of the XCOM games, I have absolutely no idea what you are saying or what point you are trying to make here.

 

 

This is exactly the point, my mind is blown that you can possibly understand this yet not grasp how what you are doing is cheating. You are not supposed to attack armies you have a 95% chance of losing against, and reloading 20 times until you finally get lucky enough with the RNG to win the battle. By doing this you are inflating your hero's levels, obtaining loot that shouldn't be available to you, removing threats from the world that should be around to terrorize your cities and armies for much longer. All of this creates a snowball effect, making you more and more powerful over the course of the game than you would have been at that point in time if you hadn't won all of those 5% chance to win battles. Most importantly, the AI does not get to take advantage of this. They don't get to magically clear out enemies that they only had a 5% chance to win against, they don't get all of that experience, gold, and loot. How do you not get that game balance can only be determined by how powerful you can grow through a certain period of time? You are growing your power far faster than the game intended because you are not suffering any of the death penalties that should have been associated with winning so many unlikely victories, you are not playing the game according to the rules it defined, you are cheating.

You claim that there is a higher learning curve in winning battles that you should have a 5% chance to win, but this is only half of the story. You are also counting on getting lucky with the RNG, VERY lucky. Sure you may have improved your strategy in the tactical battle through the 10 losses it took you to get a win, but you also require luck - thats the definition of winning when you only had a 5% chance to win. Because you are only winning when the RNG favors you, and you reload any time the RNG doesn't favor you, you are once again not playing the game according to the rules it defined, aka you are cheating. The game is balanced around the fact that you may get unlucky in battle sometimes and suffer losses, especially when you are weaker than the opposing army.

 

 

I think I've proven already that you are in fact cheating, even by your own definition. The developers did not intend for you to win every battle regardless of the odds and never lose a unit. The developers did not intend for you to get a useful item every time you loot a monsters lair. I'm not even sure why I have to explain this to you - the mere existence of death penalties and use of an RNG system are, in and of themselves, proof of the intended method of playing the game.

 

 

And this is where it all wraps up in to a nice little package. You complain that the doesn't attack you enough, you realize that its because it calculates its chances of winning and decides its not a good idea, yet you don't understand how this is the direct result of how you chose to play the game. The AI is programmed to be smart, to not start a war that it doesn't think it can win, and it can only really determine this through comparisons of power ratings. Your decision to use save games to ensure that you never lose units and always get useful loot directly increased your power rating over time, faster than the developers ever intended for it to increase, therefore you quickly outpaced the AI in power ratings because they are balanced to increase in power at a certain rate (this fluctuates obviously, based on AI personality, map settings, and much more). You broke the balance of the game by abusing save games. The developers cannot balance the game around every single possible combination of map settings, and they sure as hell can't balance it around someone flawlessly winning every single battle that they have even a 5% chance of winning - to do so would require everyone to play this way or lose.

Maybe the funniest part of all of this is that you claim that the AI's attacking would actually change anything. How would this matter when you are just going to reload and reload every battle until you win it without losing any units?

Once again, you are free to play however you want, I really could not care less. If winning battles without losing units is what you find fun, no matter how you accomplish it, then by all means continue to play that way, but please understand that the game is not and can not be balanced around playing this way. If you insist on playing this way but you truly want a challenge, then you will have to find other ways to increase the difficulty, such as playing with a less powerful set of faction/sovereign traits, or map settings that don't favor you so heavily.

Personally I take satisfaction in beating the game within the confines of the rules it defined, that is what is fun to me, so I get no satisfaction out of winning a battle after losing it. To me, I didn't really win the game if I intentionally avoided the very game mechanics that are there to ensure the game is difficult.

DeadlyJulia:

I hereby revoke my statements of you not really looking to create a challenge and only looking to brag. That was a pretty solid list of suggestions that would increase the challenge of the game, you have clearly given it more thought than I have (though I haven't really been trying).

However, you should still keep in mind that your experience with the game is very skewed due to the nature of your first game. There is supposed to be a lot of freedom in how you play, what traits you use, etc. There is nothing inherently wrong with using overpowered trait combinations or using save games to get flawless victories. You should be free to play however you want, but if you make the decision to do things like this, you need to understand what effect it has on the balance and difficulty of a given match. You can't abuse every cheap mechanic available in the game and then say its too easy - you made it too easy! If you want a challenge, play a game with more difficult settings. Many people already find the game too difficult even on the easier settings, I don't think there is any need to make the entire game harder across all difficulty levels just because its possible to stack the odds so high in your favor that even the hardest difficulty becomes a cake walk. It is your choice to abuse the overpowered game mechanics or not, just like it is your choice to use cheat codes to give yourself 20k gildar at the start of the game or not. Just because something is possible doesn't mean you have to do it.

The problem is AI in high difficulties is too passive in early game. So you don't feel challenge and don't finish the game, especially when your score is close or above AI score, especially when you spend 10-30 minutes on each turn. I have the same problem. Imho AI should rush you in the beginning because AI is much stronger. AI shouldn't rely on score. AI should assess the situation. If AI army is stronger then your army, AI should capture your cities. If many AI units is close to your city, they should capture the city. I see what AI doing. AI often create many units and do nothing. I see Magnar that create 5 armies each consisting of 6 troops. They all stand in one tile and do nothing instead of dominating the world. 5 armies of 6 troops can capture any city. Additionally AI should counter player strategy. If player has fire magic and mana or Slave Lord trait, AI should build units with fire protection and cast Nature's Cloak to them. If player builds water mage troop, AI should build a couple of units with cold protection. If player build archers, AI should build armored units. If player build unarmored units, AI should build archers. If player build armored units with fire protection, AI should build units with lighting/cold attack. And so on.

Also players on high difficulties tend to create super heroes. AI should counter them. If player has super assassin, AI should build many unarmored archers and/or fire+cold mages and/or units with lighting attack. Also AI should use heroes that counter player heroes. For example, heroes with Blind/Curse/Shrink are good vs Warrior/Defender/Assassin.