[Sombre]

I'm someone who will often say "I have to handicap myself to get a challenge from the AI". It's true. The first game of dom3 I played (I never played Dom2) I set the AI to normal and stomped it pretty easily, while messing about learning the game. The second game I played I set it to impossible and,.. stomped it easily. The problem isn't that the AI isn't that challenging - on impossible it cheats enough that it can give you a challenge if you let it and if you set up the scales, pretender etc for it then turn it AI it fares ok without all the cheating.

The problem is really that the AI isn't that much fun to play against once you realise how stupid it is. Once you get tired of it throwing its armies piecemeal into your strong PD for no reason. At this point, you have to handicap yourself, let it have a head start, don't use PD etc, otherwise there's no sense of pressure and, to me anyway, it becomes more like a chore slowly stomping the AI down.

As for SP as it relates to MP - because of the AIs very random and often nonsensical behaviour, SP doesn't prepare you for MP strat at all. It might teach you how to play the game, but beyond that it's just too different. So you can't really blame experienced MP folk for discounting the opinions that SP people have on MP gameplay issues, such as the balancing of the Vans. If they don't play MP they should just shut up instead of insisting they know something about it because they beat the AI like a red-haired stepchild.