ok since things are much improved and stable build and much more enjoyable game i try a full playtrhough with my comments and some analysis main of AI behaviour

i play as relias on chall diff

first huge BUG

ceresa didnt settle, she started going around without building

also its not clear why she has swordsman or whatever is callled that trait at lvl 1 with 0 exp... (merchant can be obtained from a drop item)

-ok lets see at turn 50 what happens

here is markin who settled on the NE side of the map

gilden starting pos wasnt so good as you see, in fact he struggled to start expanding

even though there is something very wrong

he build a totally uselss outpost, and in general going for outposts early is so bad choice the cost is too high for a non city, ai should waste time to build those outposts unless there is something really MUCH valuable

in the while karavox used all his money to recruit many heroes which is very good and he went exploring too much, i didnt record this but he went in rage of exploring all over the map, he lost some advantage here because he couldnt clear the path for new cities etc, he gained some level though, but eventually he died

-lets jump to turn 100

now another BUG happened markin is stuck for 30 40 turns

completely immobile (on the right side under the construction written over him ), that was the troop rally point so i think he was waiting some troops but nothing came out, he just stood still for so long doing nothing and he lost so much grip on the game

karavox is much better, the sovereign is high lvl (+1 on me at this point which is very good) but he couldnt expand so both lost something for now but eventually karavox is gonna do something

also to notice all the recruited champions arent helping, he hired them which is good and left them to pile like you see in the SS

im much ahead at this point, i built all my starting cities and cleared a bit the area

-turn 150

here we see marking after the bug that stuck him for so many turns started again expanding

but again he is doing wrong things, again many outposts, again outpost b4 cities which is wrong

i think his starting position was bad for ai, so many  monsters, water to complicate things and this probably caused his bad expanding

karavox on the other hand is back home and started using his level advantage to clear the area and expand, he had a good start so now he is capitalizing finally

notice how better his karavox expansion, cities instead of outposts, many monsters cleared etc this is good

here instead a zoom on the problem of champions

NOW, after 150 turns, karavox joined the champions he hired at start...

basically he wasted them, keeping them to rot for so long (after spending all his money)

he should have done something with them or brought them at start to explore maybe

at this point gildens are so much behind, while karavox is keeping up with me, his sovereign is at my level

-turn 200

karavox declared war to me, as usual his attack his bad, he come with few troops and not all at once, also he used his champions that at this point are useless, i have no problem pushing him back (i have some problem with some dragon attacking me on the other side though )

here we notice again his PERFECT expansion, this is very very good, city expansion is perfect, also notice perfect outpost placement, he doesnt build them around randomly he build only to catch far resources, in place where cities would be bad, dunno why karavox did so much better than markin on this thing

marking started finally to come out his nest but he is still much behind

we notice again his bad city placement, he doesnt clear the monsters, also he place cities too close to strong monsters, there is no way he can defend them against all those dragons when cities will expand, again too many useless outposts

at this point karavox is close to me since i lost a city to dragons, but his attacks on me are weak, markin is way behind us but being far from us and in peace he might get back into the game