Well, assuming they weren't Nightmare AI, I'd have to say they simply knew how to properly upgrade their Citadel. They could have purchased the experience upgrades or the +experience gain favor item to boost their levels. If the other guy was left alone enough to creep they would have gained quite a bit of xp as a result... Even more so if they were the Queen of Thorns as she tends to level fast due to her AOE capabilities.
It also seems logical that they purchased the +gold upgrade for their citadel and made good use of it.
If you upgraded your your Reinforcements at the Citadel at a slow/gradual pace then you fed the enemy XP as well. Then, if you were playing on a map with capturable portals on the sides then the enemy was having extra creep attacking them, which means more gold and xp.
Yep she was the queen of thorns. What you're saying makes alot of sense. They were backed into their towers too for 90% of the game, so they could creep the whole time, and it was difficult for my team to creep because we would have to move into their towers to get kills. The fact that the queen of thorns was using her AOE and had about twice as much damage as anyone else in the game proves that she was in fact getting tons of creep kills.
The game is fun and we're still learning what kinds of upgrades and items should be prioritized in buying. We got priests and angels quickly and as soon as the other team started getting up in levels they made a very strong push to our base and would have beaten us if we weren't careful. We finally got them when we upgraded to giants and stole their back left portal. It ended up being a very close call, and we were a couple deaths away from losing the game we had dominated.
The gold upgrade at the citadel, does that also increase the amount of gold you get per kill?
