Terrible Player.

[Bananadine]

Originally Posted by Bananadine

Surely it isn't too hard to blast across the map early with EA Abysia's sacred units and a strong blessing in nature, water, etc. Many, many things can defeat Normal-level AI....

Out of curiosity I have tried this. I started a game against four AI nations (they turned out to be Niefelheim, Ermor, Lanka, and Marverni), and default settings. My god was a Master Druid with E9N4 and dominion 7. My scales were Death 1, and maximal Order, Productivity, Heat, Misfortune and Drain.

At the start of the game, I told my starting commander to patrol. I made my starting assassin a prophet and told him to preach, and I had my god research Evocation and Alteration equally. I did not change these orders ever again, except to rebuild my lab, which was randomly destroyed early on.

Every turn (except at the end when it obviously wasn't necessary anymore), I recruited one Anathemant Salamander; I also continuously recruited as many Burning Ones as I could afford. I did not recruit any units other than this. Every turn, I told every mage to lead all the Burning Ones present into some semi-random neighboring province (or to besiege, break a siege, etc.). All mages were always scripted to cast Blessing five times. No troops were ever specially positioned within the battlefield.

It took me about 10 in-game years, and about an hour and a half of real time, to win. I lost many battles, but I was never in danger. I never deliberately cast any spell other than Blessing. I never built any buildings, except for that one lab, and I never used any province defense. My biggest difficulty was in fighting Bogus, who got right in my way toward the start--but that was only because I wasn't trying to be very smart about massing my troops.

At the end of the game, my income was over 3000 gold and my upkeep was about 650. I had almost 4000 gems.

Conclusion: IT IS INDEED not very hard to beat the AI, even if you play very stupidly and follow an extremely simple plan. So long as it's the right plan! (And I imagine there are lots of right plans!)