How difficult is this game?

[Tichy]

There's also the active participation of the game developers on the forums, and continuing active development of the game in the form of relatively frequent free patches with new content, often incorporating features requested by players and modders.

SP can be challenging, but in different ways than MP. I can reliably beat Impossible now as long as I don't fall to an early AI rush. In SP on impossible you need to contend with the AI having orders of magnitude larger armies than you, but know that it doesn't effectively use the magic system or item crafting, and often makes mistakes in battlefield strategy.

In MP you have to contend with extremely talented players who will drop a house on you and your mom without trying...but then you can oftentimes diplomatically attach yourself to a different talented player and learn a lot about the strategy of the game by watching the titans battle each other.