Difference in AI difficulty levels

[Tifone]

Yay, if you want to play against Normal AIs I personally suggest you to start all the players as Human and design their Pretender and scales yourself manually (better if you don't go for a bless strategy for your enemies as the AI will hardly manage this) and play the first couple of turns for everybody (overtaxing if necessary, recruiting good units, researching something useful for eventual Pretender SC or national mages, doing some first expansion as the AI is not very smart on choosing which indies attack), then turn the nation(s) you don't wanna play AI - as they go automatically on Normal difficulty