Now every time I start a new map, I'm either a handful of squares away from another faction, or I have umberdroths right at my front door ignoring the enemies that siege me. I'm ready for the next version. Normal should mean the average player gets challenged, not steamrolled.
Edit:
Gave the game another try today after a good nights rest. Played as tarth, dropped the difficulty down a level. Small map, 3 opponents. Everything else default settings. Started off fine, despite having a lot of mite armies right around my starting position. Everything was going smooth, there was a drake army nearby that I stayed pretty far away from. Then Gilden, with a stack of 4 pioneers, begins claiming all the area around my 2 cities. This causes the drake army to get pissed off, and march straight for my level 2 city. Destroyed, no chance of defending against a drake for me at 70 turns in.
I figure maybe he'll go after them now, nope. He follows a caravan road right to my main level 3 city full of my level 6 sovereign, level 3 champion, a few archers, a few defenders, and the rest militia. Completely destroyed. I don't think there is any hope for me in this game. Maybe it's the games fault, but I'm going to just assume I really suck at this game. I came to it being a Galactic Civ. fan, MoM fan, and a Civ4 fan. But for some reason I just can not grasp any ability to do anything in this game that doesn't end in a monster completely screwing over my cities. Ugh, so frustrating.
