The problem you can expand too fast, because opponents don't hinder you.

In my current .990 game I have 11 cities and most ai's have 1-3. Definitely strange.

In my current .992 game I have 2 towns, and the other AI's I've encountered have 4 each.  On this map my starting location looked great, but I had to travel a LONG way to find fertile ground for my second town.

It's a problem of difficulty. That extremist expansion AI we had in beta 4 needs to be standard for each race on hard and above. Below that, let the AI only have a few cities. The problem is that there are light users and more competitive users. I prefer a tooth and nail fight for territory with monsters having the final say in who lives or dies. Light users should be able to expand at their leisure if they are having fun just playing the game. For me, it makes it hard to justify war on my allies if my people do not covet their land. Anyhow, no AI should have the mentality to build up a few towns early on. The current balance intends a level 3 city to be about as good as a level 1 city on many levels. Technology more than anything decides city level anyhow. Towns and growth bonuses pale in comparison to the Sov prestige bonus, making every city level to the current food limits. I wish things were different, but until they are more cities is better and on hard or expert, the AI had damn well better know that.

Absolutely right. Under 0.992 hard and expert AI expansion is definitely too slow (in comparison to the other parameters of this difficulty settings). The AI is much better in other aspects now, but if you can easily outrun them with your cities and population, they have no chance in the endgame.

This has always been true for nearly all 4X games and will ever be: A slow start means an early death.

If you change to ridiculous and insane settings, the other parameters are so overwhelming that "iron man mode" is no longer fun.

Maybe your eyepatch got in the way. Or were you watching my little pony in the background?

I don't know what is going on with your game, but in my game each AI has 6 cities apiece... I only have 3 (but that is because I ended up with a really bad start).

A skilled player must make the transition from vanilla gaming to modded gaming to continue to progress. The lesson you learn from ridiculous is that winning is not always possible. It must be there to push the player into the realm of mods. Perhaps you should begin making some custom difficulties that increase the challenge, but still play by the basic rules you do? Perhaps the exploits you use to win can be modified into intentional strategies? Making counters to your most powerful strategies is how the game evolves and gains depth. As the game evolves so does the player. Then you realize the player is the game and the game is the player.

Soon you will come to see things my way.

Tuidjy,

Copy \FallenEnchantress\data\English\ElementalDefs.xml to \My Documents\My Games\FallenEnchantress\Mods\Data\

and edit the following lines in the Mod copy:

10:         <PlayerStartingPopulation>2.0</PlayerStartingPopulation>

193:         <MinTurnsBeforeUnitsDesert>2</MinTurnsBeforeUnitsDesert>

302:         <ReviveSovereignManaPercentageCost>0.9</ReviveSovereignManaPercentageCost>

304:         <ReviveChampionImmobilizationMultiplier>1</ReviveChampionImmobilizationMultiplier>

452:         <CreaturesMoveLimit>10</CreaturesMoveLimit>

Note that the last line used to be set at 1: your strategic map just got interesting.

=]