Wow on normal you say? lol I always play on hard or impossible with max AI players. I find that using a small map really increases the challenge level as well and make a house rule I can't use max death or life magics. Only 3 max if I use them since really Death is so powerful I don't see how anyone could lose playing it. Sorcery 'counter magic' spell is pretty overpowered as well. Plus Blue Skydrakes are the killer unit of choice. Channeling makes for a pretty easy game as well. I think that's the one where you can turn gold into mana 1:1, most games that's what I'm usually needing most is mana and that Channeling skill really makes it easy to get mana cause I always have an abundance of gold.
I hope that Stardock will really look at some of these attribute or enhancements players get to choose at the beginning of the game in games like MOM and AOW. Some of them are waaaaaaaaaaaaay overpowered like the Channeling one and the economy one. It's sort of like being able to build faster traveling colony ships in GC2 by giving up commerce or being able to speak to the aliens when you are setting up a game. I think they did curb this somewhat as I was able to get to impulse engines with hardly any effort and made it easy to rush colonize ahead of the AI.
I'm almost of an opinion that there shouldn't be any EXTRA choices that give advantages throughout the game when setting up a character. Something semi-permanent might be ok, a weapon, one extra spell, only 100 initial extra mana or something along those lines. Unlimited swapping of gold for mana or vice versa is just too easy to exploit the game and the AI. Or that other one where all your units will eventualy become maxed out warmongers 1 step earlier. Getting experience just sitting in a town/castle should be eliminated as well. MOM was noterious for this you just build units leave them setting in towns/castles and they gained maxium levels over time. booooo lol
On another note if they are going to implement these powerful attributes/enhancements allow US to create or give the AI these advantages over prebuilt models. This is what I love about GC2 and it's expansions. I can really modify the initial creation and difficulty of each individual AI. I really hope this is added in this game.
