I will try extreme next.

Research stone giant (30 turns)-> summon one (1 turn)-> kill some AI peasants -> win the game

Research party (10 turns)-> make one party with peasants (6 turns)-> kills some AI peasants -> win the game

Wait for 100 turns before attacking -> best thing AI has is one stone giant... WTF?

There are 2 problems...

1. AI can't understand what techs or spells it needs to have for good defense.

2. AI spams nothing but 'soldiers with sticks' etc. and is a pushover.

If AI would prioritize its research depending on what resources it has, it would be a challenge. Also immobile high level guardian units in capitals would make a big difference too.

I beat both extreme and ridiculous equally easily... sad, but at this point, my babies never get beyond about 6-10 years old

your lucky, my babies never reach 3 year old lol

Once you understand the game mechanics, there are just a littany of ways to obliterate the AI.  Deinedez said it best.  There are about 10 ways to win every single time on the hardest difficulty with just forward momentum alone.  Half the time I get so tired of conquering and managing all of the extra cities I'm heaping into my empire that I don't even bother building in them.  So basically to compound the problem of the game being too easy, I have to build up each city I conquer, one tiny square at a time, to make use of them.  Ugh. 

Which wouldnt be so annoying if the game ran at more than 5fps when trying to place those buildings

I'm not saying "oh play Extreme! I bet it'll be hella easy!"

I'm just asking the "pros" to play on Extreme and give feedback if it is harder or easier than Ridiculous. Or if it is noticeable at all. You can still stomp the AI.

Quit rushing and using tactics which will be nerfed in a week and try to have some fun.

4 games on extreme so far here, no difference, it's easy like any other difficulty setting.

- sov's self suicide
- enemy factions don't have any defence
- can declare war on all factions i currently have contact with, and i still win with ease
- i only need one stack to wipe out the enitre world
- i can keep lots of citys/settlements undefended, if creatures attack a city then i actually don't even care
- i stop building up my citys quite soon in the game, there is no point

To be honest, i do not notice any difference between normal and ridiculous other than the mass spawn rate of creatures.

PS: I'm not rushing either, i'm a builder, but at an certain point it makes no sense to keep building up.

PPS: more details, i always play on large maps, with all AIs, set to the correct difficulty setting, so if i play extreme world, AIs all are as well set on extreme.

I've tried with all AIs on Extreme as well as Ridiculous and they suck on both. It's a good point that without FOW it's got too many choices to make, but the problem seems to be, even if you give them till turn 100 before attacking (that's twice as long a I normally wait), they don't build units of any substance. Very, very occasionally I see a party, but it's made up of just the basic unit type.

I think the problem may be lack of resources. Whenever I capture cities they haven't even got the basic improvements in them. Sure they've grown to high levels due to the prestige boost the AI gets, but they are mostly empty. I don't think the AI knows how to prioritise resource gathering and research - it probably tries to balance everything out and ends up going nowhere. For a human, the mechanics of Elemental are very simple and it's quite easy to see what order you need to do things in to maximise your output in the first 50-75 turns. Once the AI has been programmed with the same logic, it will be quite challenging. But for now, by turn 50, any good human player has hit a rate of exponential growth that none of the AIs, with their ponderous linear growth can keep up with.

Now, you all do realize that setting the difficulty to ridiculous only effects wolves and spiders and such?  and NOT the AI?  Right?

my only grip I am starting to have is having Civs die out trying to take out a minor civ. Their sov dies and they die...I play to have fun but that particular bug is starting to irk me a little. I play on Large worlds and only 150 turns into the game Kraxis has died to a minor kingdom. Tarth has died to Monsters and ruffians somehow, and Capitar died in a "war" it didn't even say who or how they got killed. So far I haven't met anyone but one minor civ. I think all the ones that were near me died already.

the problem i am having in my game is that the AI just puts masses of troops in its border towns.  i had a 220 CP stack and the closest kraxis city had 280 CP stack in it.  i looked just past it(i could see what was in all the cities even the ones in fog of war, bug i think, or atleast hope it is), they had maybe stacks of about 20 CP each.  i just walked on past this settlement and took the next one.  easy as that.  i look forward to when the AI gets better, i know it will.

That's map difficulty (the one you choose on the first screen). When you add AIs into the game you can choose their individual difficulty.

There's a lot of room between better and good here, however. But yeah, hopefully over the year or so there'll be a lot of improvement.

I still regret preordering for £35 when I'll be playing barely any of it.