Re: Nerf
 

Construction 6 isn't necessary to create worthwhile thugs. Especially since fomoria has nature. Consider a poison immune FK wielding a snake bladder stick. If you had gone with an e/n bless you could pretty much just give him said gear, have him buff up and call it a day. You might need a few of such minimalist geared thugs to defeat an AI army of that size though.

thejeff - you forget you're talking to the guy who thinks thunderstrike is useless.

Re: Nerf
 

Incidentally, for my own enjoyment i've started using RanDom then eliminating map independents. It's not exactly a user-friendly method, but I find it really pumps up the difficulty and my enjoyment of the game. Even just the better start locations helps a lot. I can actually and honestly lose and the RanDom provinces are far more interesting/ slow player expansion.

One thing that makes AI games a lot easier is starting in a corner or safe map edge, I find that happens a lot with random starts for some reason. The AIs tear eachother up while the player just picks out targets and cleans up the mess which makes it 90000% easier.

Re: Nerf
 

In fairness, thunderstrike is less useful in SP than MP. It's small area and fatiguing, while the AI tends to use large hordes of chaff rather than smaller armies of better units.

Re: Nerf
 

Yeah, I try to play wraparound maps to avoid this advantage. With a corner start where I only have to deal with 1-2 AIs, it's not too hard to chew them up, digest, and expand with a monstrous empire base.

With random "ribbon" maps you can force this advantage. Just play with something 100 pixels tall and 2000 wide -- you'll only have 2AIs to deal with on either side at any time.

Re: Nerf
 

Then try playing something like Asia Twist, and you can be attacked from all sides pretty easily.

Re: Nerf
 

Well it's already been said but AI are really bad and with a game with so many different strategies AI will never be good. So I never compete against the AI instead I compete against myself. Usually I play on smaller maps (my favorite are without a doubt Dawn of Dominions which is the closest to a scenario there is) I choose a nation and then trying to "win" as fast as possible. Next time I play the same map with the same settings and trying to beat my last my record for winning as fast as possible. Yeah boring to most but that's how I always played games since the early '80s. :)

Re: Nerf
 

Provided your game is up to date, battlefield wide spells go down if the caster dies or leaves the battlefield. So your golems have to stick around during the entire battle for this to work. But it's a fun idea.

My own advice to deal with the big AI armies early on is skip the power playing and go the hard but fun way. Make advanced forces with a mix of troops for different purposes (arrow catchers, frontline, artillery, flankers etc), and support them with those mages you feel like trying out new tricks with. This way you'll learn the most about battlefield tactics, placement and how to use the less obvious magic. Which in conjunction with testing out MP builds and expansion techniques, is the whole point of playing the AI at all.

Re: Nerf
 

Yeah, I forgot about that little detail. That pretty much torched that plan.