Elemental Forums
Build one huge awesome city while the AI wastes its time and resources spamming settlers and pioneers and outposts and cities. Take over all of these with the awesome army you have amassed while the AI does this. Rinse and repeat. Please fix this!
I am playing on challenging with huge map size.
Does it matter?
If you play on small maps, this strategy would be easy to do. On huge/challenging it sounds tougher. I think I have to try.
Its the same strategy I use every game with each new beta with the same game settings huge and challenging. I keep hoping they will fix the spam and make the AI concentrate more on better quality cities and units as the player does rather than weak spam!
Likewise, no single city should ever be able to support a world conquering army...
What race? What attributes for your sovereign? Do your enemies stay the same in each game, and who are they?
Sorry for all the questions. 
What exactly do you think it's the number of cities which makes the AI weak? I build as many cities as possible and never have a challenge with the AI on Huge/Challenging maps with many AI either. The strongest ones are those who DO spam cities so... I'm very skeptical about your understanding of what makes the AI strong vs. weak.
The problem is not so much with overexpansion, it is with weak AI armies. They don't level thoughtfully like a player does. We will likely always have that advantage. Many cities allows them many units, but those units are never competitive when we have units that are 5+ levels ahead of them. Many outposts is a bad strategic decision most of the time unless you have a large enough military to stomp anyone that decides to attack you. If you lose outposts, you are losing the time you put into the pioneer and the resources it gathers. That could be 30+ turns wasted on poor defense. This is why I never build outposts unless I can protect them. I always let the AI take them early on, knowing that I can take them once the construction is complete.
I have been trying to solve this problem. My current solution is to allow trained units to start at levels as high as 6 to catch up with a player army that has been leveling alot. Basically Fortresses offer 1 level per city level. Add Command post for 6 levels. This allows the AI to produce units as good as my early game units or at least stand a chance in battle. There is a sharp increase in XP from level 6 to level 7, so getting higher requires alot of time.
It is a pretty good solution to weak AI armies. I can't think of a better solution right now. I am curious to see how the devs approach this problem. At the very least I expect the AI to start patrolling outposts.
Custom race. Mage attributes plus super hero recruiter. All factions included.
I keep hoping they will fix the spam and make the AI concentrate more on better quality cities and units as the player does rather than weak spam!
My points exactly! I never build cities or outposts because the AI spams so many of them they are too weak to defend them. Meanwhile I have one huge awesome city and huge awesome armies to take over all of their weak spam cities and outposts defended by weak spam units!
Yes, Path of the Mage lends itself to fast advancement, and a single city with lots of research would help. How do you deal with the AI's assumption that any player without a lot of units (regardless of quality) is ripe for the picking?
Once defense is fully fleshed out, the devs can add a power rating to defense structures. That means your faction power will go up by building a good defense. This is a fine line though. I would like Faction power to look the same as defense where it is split into three categories:
Soldier Strength
Here you would see the overall power of the faction's army, Sov, heroes, and monsters.
Economy
Here you would see the overall power of the faction's production, research, technology, gildar, and wealth.
Defense
Here you would see the overall power of the faction's defensive structures, territory seclusion, and win/loss ratio from battles.
Those three numbers would be added up to make the total faction power. This would give the AI essentially a perfect assessment of how powerful or vulnerable a faction is. This is essentially the same as everything a human looks at.
Knowing that this will never make it into the current game, I will save it for the expansion idea list. The hardest thing to code would be territory seclusion. This is a huge factor in one's ability to defend. I am sure Frogboy can think of a way to do it, but I am no Frogboy.
I like these. That would really put a crimp in the standard Pariden approach to gameplay. I especially like Economy, since the aggregate total of Gold, Mana, Essence, Iron, etc, should have some value before its converted into weapons, armor, and troops.
The problem with the AI evaluations as I understand them now are, they don't take into account potential military, only active. My frequent strategy in such games is to focus on technology and production capacity/speed, such that a very small active military is needed, but that a small, highly advanced military can be trained at a moment's notice. This reduces maintenance costs, allows more buildings to be built, and also solves the issues of having a military that is constantly being outdated. Once I obtain a substantial tech advantage over the AI, I will attack. Under the current system however, an AI might underestimate me and get crushed.
Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.