I love watching videos, I tell ya, seeing how people play the game helps immensely when doing AI.

If it weren't for you guys walking me through your strategies the AI wouldn't be nearly as good as it is.

I didn't listen to the whole video, but hearing Handel in the background made me smile.

I play on normal and the AI seems very good right now.  I imagine it will even get better, but if it does, my dumb ass will probably have to turn down the difficulty.  They seem much smarter with their money than I am, I have a hard time being able to afford to field as many troops as they do and I don't expand as quickly.  That's probably my issue, i tend to stick to a small number of cities and turtle up, while the computer makes a vast empire, and I sit and wonder why I'm not doing as well.  Also, I am almost always stuck making cities with a 4/2 food/mat ratio.  Every now and then I might see a 4/3, 3/4 or 5/2, and 5/3 is the best I have seen.  Alt and have never been able to build a level 5 city in any game.

Other civilizations declare war on me at all times, non are  interested in trade or peace.  I am afraid of exploring as I don't want to meet other civs at all.  they always have a much higher power rating than I do, their troops sometimes have strangely high stats, and their heroes must gain 3 or four traits per level up. Or I find a way to get diplomatic capital, as its super easy to make peace with it, but that peace doesn't last long. 

I had one game where an epic strength group of Umbersomethings and golems escaped from a wildlands and destroyed my civilization.  They killed every group of troops I had in one or two hits.  I eventually killed them with a lot of casualties, with all my heroes, and some "mage" troops shooting them as they ate my frontline troops.  Although I had lost three stacks of troops to them and three cities already.

Although, the last game I had, I decided to use my champion to adventure and sell stuff, set my taxes to none, and create a ton of "slaves" thes e are spear wielders with just a couple pieces of leather, weak and conscript, and a spear.  I think they were 5 group units and they were cheap as shit.  They defended my cities well enough in bulk.  Then I created a single army of knights with all the benefits and gear I could throw at them.  When Yithril attacked, I knew all I could do was engage them with my army, sack their cities and raze them, as there is no way I could take and hold them.  And this pattern repeats itself over and over.  And now after 400 some turns, I'm enjoying myself, but the game is crashing, boo.  I need to turn that one in as every time I load it, it will crash in a few turns.

As you have suggested before seanw3, city militia should improve a lot during the game (on city level up, caused by building castles and so on). That would reduce steam rolling a bit.

The easiest way to win on challenging for me, it to attack and take cities from others a little while into the game. Tougher militia would slow that tactic down

I mod the elementaldefs to increase home territory defense and attack and to 35% (from 25%) and also penalize enemy territory attack 10%. I think it works much better. I also make pioneers take 200 resources to build and double the ZOCs of cities as they level. it's effective but not exactly what I want, yet. But pretty sweet vids thus far.