I can gladly revise this after restarting a new game on the newest build. The computer Ai now really does upgrade to the best stuff and had some decent units to fight my higher end units. so Expert it still is for me
I agree that the AI on expert level is better now, but still too bad to be a challenge. In my last game, I simply attacked everyone I met with my SOV + first champion and took their new founded towns. Their reactions?
Kraxis did nothing at all. He never crossed my borders to retake the town and agreed to a peace treaty for 6 gildar when I overtook him in power rating. Then I still had 1 Hero, a shadow warg and a sand golem to protect my 3 cities! I never produced anything other than pioneers. Perhaps he was trashed by monsters or had other wars?
Ythril attacked me with weak stacks. He passed his lost town which I left completely unoccupied because I wanted to raze it and attacked one of my other towns. Of course he lost against my "Army" + 2 Militia. My counterattack was succesfull because he placed his newly produced units outside of town (another AI issue, it should default to place them in the city). Now he has lost all of his 3 towns, agreed to peace for 6 Gildar and stands now motionless for 30 turns next to his former home. Why didn't he surrender, he had every reason to do it? Surrender treshold is set to normal, as all other parameters!!!
Meanwhile porcupinee declared war on me, because I attacked their 3 friends (they are all empires!?) but did nothing more than temporarily take an outpost.
The only real threat is Ceresa, who in the mean time has taken over a new founded town of me. But I will deal with her too even if her power rating is much higher than mine, because now I have 5 towns and she will make the same mistakes as the others.
Conclusion: I can deal with four enemies right next to me with only 2 heroes and two weak summons, and only 3 own built cities without building any units. Sure, I have Ignis Longbow, the tactical battles were always close, I always had to sacrifice the warg to save my heroes, my lone hero now has 2 injuries, but I never did a reload in the whole process. The AI simply makes too many mistakes: placing units outside town, not using horses for his heroes and units (the crucial mistake), attacking on the wrong spot, wasting time when moving in my territory...They are all already mentioned in other posts and have to be addressed for a good gaming experience.
This achievement would never ever have been possible on ridiculous. I would have been dead after 20 turns, period.
The gap between those two difficulty settings is much to wide. Which leaves me and probably a lot of other players tinkering with the settings until a challenging but winable level (ironman, without reloads) is found. On the other hand, were in a beta and I am absolutely sure that sooner or later this will be the case.
