Better AI/Much harder gameplay/Slower pace

Not until the Python APIs are released and even then it'll take a while. Give it three months or thereabouts.

Here's a difficulty I've been playing with

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<AIDifficultyLevels>
  <AIDifficultyLevel InternalName="AIDiffLvl_Reckoning">
    <DisplayName>Reckoning</DisplayName>
    <AIEconomicRatio>6.0</AIEconomicRatio>
    <AIFOWCheat>0</AIFOWCheat>
    <AIHPRatio>6.00</AIHPRatio>
    <AIStartingFundsRatio>100.0</AIStartingFundsRatio>
    <AISovereignPointsRatio>5.0</AISovereignPointsRatio>
    <AISovereignHPRatios>5.0</AISovereignHPRatios>
    <AIIntelligenceFactor>1.0</AIIntelligenceFactor>
    <AIUsesCombatMagic>1</AIUsesCombatMagic>
  </AIDifficultyLevel>
</AIDifficultyLevels>

The Ai starts with 10000 gildar, all units have 6 times the normal health (twice as much as ridiculous), and gets 6 times as much resources (twice as much as ridiculous). I've also turned off FoW cheat, because I think this causes the AI to not respond to threats.

Unfortunately the tags that govern the AI sovereign doesn't work, so you'll still get the enemy sovereign suiciding into your territory and you can just kill him off. Hopefully fixed in 1.08.

Thanks!

How do i integrate this ai?

Open your elemental install directory, open /Mods/ folder, make a new file named anything.xml, put that stuff in it. Open up game (make sure "use mods" is enabled in options - restart if it wasn't) and start a new game with the difficulty.

BTW, you can change the pacing of the game in the new game options (where you choose the victory conditions & world name).   

I've been messing around a bit to get the epic feel (I used Heavenfall's setting too). I'm not woking too hard because of the impending major changes to the game, but here's what I've come up with.

First, I modded the pioneer kit, "CoreAccessories", to make Pioneers take 20 turns to build and cost two pop's, 100 gold and 50 materials.

    <!--Equipment Production Requirements -->
    <ProductionRequirement>
      <Type>Resource</Type>
      <Attribute>Gold</Attribute>
      <Value>100.0</Value>
    </ProductionRequirement>

    <ProductionRequirement>
      <Type>Resource</Type>
      <Attribute>Materials</Attribute>
      <Value>50.0</Value>
    </ProductionRequirement>  
   

    <ProductionRequirement>
      <Type>Resource</Type>
      <Attribute>Population</Attribute>
      <Value>1.0</Value>
    </ProductionRequirement>  
   
    <AdditionalTrainingTurns>17</AdditionalTrainingTurns>

Then I modded "ElementalDefs" to lengthen things out some. I doubled the epic pacing from 3 to 6.

<TechPacingMultiplier_Epic>6.0</TechPacingMultiplier_Epic>

I halved the population/prestige growth.

  <!-- ** Population NormalPopIncrease = .10 PovertyPopIncrease=.025 PrestigePopIncrease=0.10 ** -->
  <NormalPopIncrease>0.05</NormalPopIncrease>
  <PovertyPopIncrease>0.012</PovertyPopIncrease>
  <PrestigePopIncrease>0.05</PrestigePopIncrease>

This helped a lot to slow things down some. I haven't had a chance to test things out much, but there are other fields in the "ElementalDefs" that should help balance things out more for a long game. I'd like to slow down spell research more in general (relative to the tech research). Does anyone know how?

I've also thought about modding the existing spells to create more spells levels with fewer spells per level, and reducing the amount of experience gained for battles. Any thoughts/experience on these or other epic-making changes?

If "Epic" feels to fast to you, as it does for me, you can mod this with about a minute of work. Copy and paste the ElementalDefs.xml to your mods directory. I bumped up the tech as follows:

<!-- ** Tech Points ** -->
  <TechCostMultiplier>4</TechCostMultiplier>
  <TechCostExponent>1.8</TechCostExponent>
  <TechOverallMultiplier>1.50</TechOverallMultiplier>

Now, I've put off playing more than necessary until a couple patches come out, so the cost may get out of hand towards the end of any tree, if so, reduce the TechCostExponent to 1.6 or so. I also bumped the spell level scalar up to this:

<!-- ** spell level scalar ** -->
  <SpellLevelScalar>30.0</SpellLevelScalar>

Again, your mileage may vary, but it makes the higher level techs/spells feel truly rewarding when you get them.

@JSJ - good to know...thanks for the info!

Thanks for those info´s, tried the first one, didn´t change much. Haven´t tried the other mods. I decided for myself to wait a couple of months, till some patches rolled out.