[Rainbow]

The AI nations appear to mass HUGE armies at higher difficulty levels. Much larger than any positive scales can ever justify. This indicates to me that the AI does indeed cheat with gold/ressources at higher than normal difficulty settings.

I think most dom players start out by losing the the AI, while they get used to and adapt to the same-time movement of armies, and learn how to build and compose armies to be effective. These seemingly rudimentary things can take many days of playing before you have enough experience to know what works and what does not. The best way is to notice in each game what seems to work, and what does not. This can be very simple things, like noticing that your heavy infantry armies almost always win, but that they never kill many enemies because they cannot run them down when they break, and that your suffer huge losses when heavy infantry breaks, because they are too slow to retreat before being run down.

Once you have a firm grip on these basics, you are ready to take your game to the next level by using gems to get the maximum gain from them. Later in the game, gems will determine the outcome, as they can produce units, magic items, and spell effects that can be applied to destroy any army comprised of normal units purchased for gold, regardless of its size and composition. To master this art, you must study all the spells, magic items and units (including summoned units) in the game, which again will take days of playing with trial and error.

It's all jolly good fun. :-)

/Rainbow