Keep going!  Looks like the AI just needs to generate a little mana. 

Question was, how did you do that?  Did you have a bigger army?  Better balanced army?  AI left cities/resources undefended?  How well were the cities developed?  How advanced was the AI tech?  Magic deployed to better ends?

When you play a better player in chess, you figure out what the other player did right against you, and then try to emulate that the next game?

Just want to say that not everybody love challenge. Some people hope for extreme AI, while the others just want to enjoy the game. If the AI is too difficult to the second type of people, they will consider the game as a bad game. You just need to make a standard but fun AI for Beginner, Easy and Normal AI, and give everything out to the level beyond that. Players shouldn't blame the developer for easy AI if they play in easy or normal AI; because they should go to the hardest one.

I'm actually curious about the difference in the graphs.  What caused your population to flatline for two large sections of years while the AI's was steadily increasing?  On the research graph does the Y axis represent research generated per turn?  If so what caused your sharp increase followed by a matching sharp drop?  Did you destroy a research generating building?  Lose an outpost?

All of these graphs make it look like an even match up between you and the AI.  If they're telling to truth and the AI matched your capabilities in each of these areas how did you steam roll them?  What caused it?  Do they just suck at tactics and you crushed them in a key battle?  Did they build bad armies?  Waste those resources (equal to yours) in areas that didn't actually increase their empire's strength? 

I guess what I'm asking is what's the story behind the graphs?

Brad, I know it's tempting, but refrain from touching the "iWin" button.

I wrote a hole wall ripping brainsucker a new one, but then I realized that he is probably very young or very foreign to misunderstand how difficulty will work. You can just play on novice my friend. 

There is the question if attacking is too easy vs defending. If defender has not enough advantage, then AI should use steamrolling too. That makes for a dull game.

The typical situation is that you have two cities you need to defend. If the attacker can mass his forces against one of the cities, and choose the city to attack at will, then defending both cities needs 2x the army the attacker has. So, the defender should either have enough time to see the attack coming and mass his forces against the attack based on that, or defending the city should have some advantage. Halving movement speed in enemy territory could work here. A leader who can lessen this effect would be really valuable. The overwhelming maneuver speed was one of the key reasons why Genghis Khan and Napoleon were so successful in their military operations.

In middle ages the attack/defense balance was somewhat correct: a small force in a castle could defend against a much larger force for some time. This gives the defender enough time to mass a counter attack force and break the siege of the castle. If the defender doesn't do that, the siege will slowly drain the defenders supplies and thus the attacker can still conquer cities easily enough, it just takes some time.

In Civilization the balance is implemented through attack/defend values, and strong fortify and city wall effects. This made the attack/defense balance interesting. Due to how tactical battles work, it seems hard to implement a similar balance mechanism in FE.

Finding a good balance to the attack/defend ration is the key IMHO. If attacking is too easy, then the AI has little hope defending his cities. And if that is the case, attack is the best defense. This will mean short and chaotic games. On the other hand, if attacking is too hard, then that makes for a dull game, too. If you always need to siege a city for 10 turns before conquest, it will be boring...

Of course it is possible the balance is correct, and the problem is in fact the AI not building big enough army. Without playing the game it is hard to know. So, the logical conclusion is that you must give me access to the game so that we can find out what the real problem is. Right?

Stardock's done that in every single game since GalCiv I.  No worries there.

My request for AI, is that it will play a competitive game with me, as long as I play "legitimately".  In GC2, there's a few things I don't do, because I think they exploit the AI.

There needs to be a counter to the Steamroller effect otherwise games become very boring as soon as you get going (more cities conquered, means you can conquer even more cities and even more, etc.).  Maybe there needs to be a very defensible home base that takes a long time to conquer usually.

Best regards,
Steven.

One sollution to this could be sieges, like in the Total War games. Unless you bring some special siege equipment with you (which is slow and potentially vulnerable), it takes a few turns to build up to the battle. This gives the defending player time to maybe marshall a relief army, or at the very least prepare other cities that might soon fall to the enemy.

Also, freshly conquered cities shouldn't just become stable and contributing to the new owner, it takes a while to quench unrest and start full production.

Keep up the work frogboy. A good (not necessarily a extremely difficult one) AI is important for a good game, and too many games lately have had bad AI's spending all their money and graphics and fluff. I know you already know this but I just wanted to say: Keep up the good work!

I love the thought of near invincible cap cities, would also be nice for minor factions and possibly wildlands.  In Europe Universalis III they use the production of different lvl's of forts to keep steamrolling to a min.= no fort- simply move on the land & take it, lvl 1 fort- you have to seige it for @ a year, lvl 2 fort - ya have to seige for @ a year & 1/2, lvl 3 fort - 2years and so on, this would help keep factions that don't rush armies/war tech around a bit longer.  

I don't like the siege idea at all. It's just a patchwork on what should be a real siege system. Either do it right, or don't waste resources on it.