I'd advise you install Heavenfall's After the War mod as it re-balances much of the game. Its effects are generally subtle and it does nerf some of the stats. The big one affecting your gameplay is that the AI can keep on spamming out cities without any restrictions. Heavenfall's mod makes building a new city cost 1 food which means that most civ's stop building at around 5 or 6 cities - which feels like a comfortable amount.

The AI does seem to race away in terms of its power. In my current game I was playing Gildar (for the reason you mention regarding the iron mines) and was boxed in by Umbar. When Umbar declared war I had a power rating of about 20 against his 60. I moved all units with armour rating to the frontier town along with the only hero I managed to recruit. Basically used the Frontier town as a tower defence point while I researched and built up. Any stack they sent into my territory was attacked and used to level up my developing units. By the time I had research and built up 4 metal armed and armoured units the power rating was about 35 for me and 100 for Umbar. With the stack of 4 plus my hero and sovereign I could go on the attack. The basic approach was to set up a shield of my troops and use arcane arrow on the enemy troops. Once they closed my two magic users would basically heal friendlies while the troops did the attacking. Worked well.

You don't need to exploit the AI to win on Normal.  I've played many games on normal and have yet to find much difficulty at all.  The only issue I found was getting a mine at the start so my sov is a naturalist to accomplish this.  This way when I get to metal weapons I can make units right away.  I've never concentrated on armour in the game after leather armour.  Just weapons and bows.  Equip heroes with high damage weapons and bows for casters then you can shoot a few times and then cast a spell at the end of each combat move.  I usually make 10-12 cities quickly which gives me a larger production base for units and I can produce them quickly once needed as the AI starts demanding cash and going to war with me when I refuse.  I then take one or two groups of units and take out each enemy empire/kingdom one after another.  Just make sure you've build all available tech research buildings as you go.

Typically I play on a large map against all available enemies.  Hope this helps.

I never had a problem beating the AI. My strategy? I level up my sovereign putting all points into Intel. In combat I use Spell Blast (33% Intel Damage Area Effect Spell), Arcane Arrow (50% Intel damage) and Touch of Entrophy (30 points of damage) to decimate AI forces while my forces pull back for a turn or two. My army usually consists of 2 archer units and 3 infantry units.

As I stated twice in my opening post, I tried all difficulty settings from novice to normal, but not above that.

I also want to clarify that my problem with the game is that the novice and beginner settings are not really novice/beginner at all; instead, they are insanely hard.

I expect to have some challenge in normal settings though.

Maybe the problem is not inherent to the AI itself, in terms of the computer's ability to elaborate strategies. The problem is that computer controlled civilizations grow much faster that the player's. For instance, the computer is able to produce strong troops and has several cities dislocated through out the map before my main town has reached level 3. It looks like the AI can produce resources out of thin air.

I admit I'm not a champion at strategy games, but I'm not a complete dummy either. Again, the NOVICE difficulty should be a pushover for anyone, in order to cater for even the laziest players. That is not the case of EWOM.

Anyway, I'll try some more maps in the next days and take notes while I play, in order to provide a detailed record of my experience, to give you an idea of what I mean.

Try just playing on 'normal' I found the AI did odd things and was much more aggressive on 'easy' then I though it should be.  I got the chop the first game I played too on easy but I was unfamiliar with the whole game at the time so it wasn't a surprise.  Also play against as many opponents as possible on your map.  This will let the AI fight itself and buy you some time.  Hope this helps.

So that explains why the AI's pioneers beeling for special stuff and stroll right past a huge stack of monsters unescorted as the monsters rush past them to attack my army guarding my pioneer.

In the code I thought the line "<AIFOWCheat>0</AIFOWCheat> " set it so they could not always see the entire map including resources and it was not until the higher levels of difficulty when it changes to "<AIFOWCheat>1</AIFOWCheat> " that they could.  Perhaps I am understanding it wrong and what the AIFOWCheat does.  Does it refer to units only and not terrain / resources?

To me the AI is always like a younger brother that is five years my junior. I feel bad about being stronger and smarter, but I know he must be regularly beaten and demoralized before he starts to grow into something that can challenge me. I set my AIFOWcheat to 1...

I agree, the AI is ridiculous, especially with it's city spamming. To beat it, just go on the offensive take over all their cities. This is annoying though, as I don't feel like I have created my empire or planned my cities. This really grinds my gears!

However, i'd just like to play the game more relaxed, maybe build a couple of cities, not worry about the AI taking up ALL the land. So i shall be trying this mod that was mentioned previously. Come on Stardock, sort it out, I've supported you ever since Stellar frontier!!!

I just started playing Elemental and this is what I did to get a hang of the game without getting swarmed by the computer controlled kingdoms and empires from the start:

I made a random map with the excellent toolkit that came with the game, I put one starting position on a small island and another one on a large continent. As I started the game, I noticed I happened to be the one not stranded on the desert island (otherwise I would have just tried again and hoped to be assigned the good start position next time).

So now I can just wander about exploring the complex game without hurry, while quests, wandering monsters and the sheer quantity of game mechanics still offer me a lot of challenge. Highly recommended for new players finding the game too tough in my opinion!

I have seen various monsters in ai armies, but assumed that they were from city leveling with the random gardian option.

harpo

If you reas the manual the difference between the AI's is the use of complex and incomplex algorithms.

On easy it used alot more incomplex ones and may thusly do things that seem unexpected to you.
It's not that it's as much "easy" as it is brutish.