[st.patrik]

Any nation is overpowered if you know how to use them effectively. In this game I opted for a heavy bless strategy, which meant that I got a late start (imprisoned god) relatively speaking. Everything has a trade-off: if I had been attacked early on by a thug pretender I may not have made it, but now I have the troops and power to dominate Vanheim.

The AI is not bad, but is never to be compared to the challenge of a human opponent. There are a lot of things I would have done differently if this would have been a MP game. I probably could have given myself a harder time by setting the AIs to mighty or impossible.

I've said this before, but I think that the AI opponents are tough in the early game, because (if you set them to above normal) they have more resources than you, so can expand faster. If you make it to the middle game you can be on even footing - matching their numbers with your strategy. Once you get to the end game (ifyou get to the end game) they are easier, because you have (as an intelligent human being) figured out how to defeat their strategies.