No, and I'm beginning to understand why, it's a bottleneck in the building queue. Basically, you can crank up the economy of the AI to very high levels but the AI can still only build so many units in x many turns. If you have a strategy that can overcome that production capability, you can beat the AI on any difficulty. What the difficulty setting needs to do is give AI bonuses to their training time and construction time. This way, they can pump out more units and build faster, and thus is able to field an army of fodder that might be able to survive your first strike onslaught. That is, of course, assuming you don't use cheap strategies that target their sovereign to make all their work pointless.

I lose all the time. I like to play a slow game and build my cities and here comes the AI with it's ginormous armies. This is on "novice", BTW.

Never once, and I always play on "ridiculous".

Yes I agree completely with this.  The fact that the game doesn't have a "buy it now" option for production seems like an oversight. When pressed the AI should be able to counter you by quickly building up a given city

If you play slow and try to develope really nice single cities you will get blown away, but if you city spam and just try for maximum output, you will win everytime.

For anyone watching this thread that can't win every time. Here is the no fail strategy.

Spolier alert:

1. take any random attributes when building your soverign, it won't really matter.

2. Build a tech and arcane building

3. Research archery for tech and head for Infernal for spells

4. Imbue every champion you find

5. Buy them each a bow

6. Once you get the Infernal spell head toward Fire Giant

7. Summon one fire giant for each Champion

8. Take this stack of bow wielding spell casters and steamroll everyone in your path.

I rarely, if ever, spam cities.  Unless you consider building 3-4 cities the whole game spamming

how do you get all the resources?  on even a moderate sized map the 5-tile rule leaves out quite a bit, so i always end up having to city spam...  is there something i'm missing in reference to that?

I have my thoughts and opinions on the AI:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/397139

Thanks for the post Frogboy, seems like a logical way to balance it.  You shouldnt be able to have a giant army of really powerful summoned creatures AND very powerful spells, something has to give. What will be nice is that if you dismiss your army (presumably because they just conquered a few cities) then that mana per turn should go back into the pool to build back up so you can either summon creatures in another spot or just use it for nukes.

I also like the idea of making shards VERY important as strategic resources.  PLEASE make sure the AI defends these ferociously and also tries to capture a few enemy ones as well.  This will make planting cities next to shards even more meaningful to encase them in city walls.  Currently I really don't defend any resources since the AI doesn't seem to go around destroying them very much.

Elemental War of Shards

This really seems like an interesting way to solve this particular problem. However, I think this needs to be in done in conjunction with making normal units more interesting. I feel like most people stumbled across the sov/champ/summon strategy simply because normal units just can not compete with it. While the changes yall are making in terms of limiting how incredibly powerful a summon stack can get, we are then left with the back and forth smash fest that is normal unit combat. Personally I believe that unit equipment should confer a role to the soldier, by giving some usable ability which epitomizes the role. For example, a boar spear could give a unit the ability to step up a spear wall, making them far better defenders, or an axe unit could use berserk making them great attackers with very weak defense. In this way, the AI could determine the relative strength of an army based up what roles have what weight for their given needs.

In version 1.07, the AI rushed me with 3 12-man squads of sions. I had  nothing that could stop them. NOTHING! The game ended with my sovereign and his two children holding my capital by themselves. They all had about 50 essence, so I relegated one of my kids to just blowing the stacks back, while my son and I hammered them with everything we could. It felt amazingly epic, and even though I knew it was a lost cause, I felt suitably heroic fighting on as my family died one by one. Probably the most awe-inspiring last stand I've ever had in a game.

I've never lost either. Hardest level against 5 hostile empires and it barely gives a challenge. 1.08 does play a little better but way more is needed in AI department. For one, computer just isnt aggresive enough. I leave cities unportected all the time. It doesnt fight well on tactical either.

Actually, I find they are way too aggressive. I will regularly lure them to attack empty cities only to destroy their entire army one teleport later. A lot of the time this involve their sovereign and thus their kingdom as well. Making them aggressive would just make them more prone to this kind of luring strategy.

As for going for other victories. Most victories requires an army. Diplomacy needs one to make people fear you (and thus easier to ally). Sometimes you'll need the army to smash one side of a war. Master Quest needs a small one that can do the quest, although this is probably the easiest one (and thus requiring the smallest army). Spell of Making takes forever, so you basically needs an army to survive that long. So in the end, you need an army whatever you do... so don't ignore warfare. Just optimize a strategy that would have you research the least techs for the most benefit.