I still prefer ridiculous for the hp boost. Otherwise you can just use stone giant (like posted above) and blizzard to destroy everything. When the (ridiculous) enemy spawns units with 300+ health after 100 turns, it's a very different story.

Edit: AI only has shitty units if it started with a shitty spawn. Half the AI spawns have one fertile field and nothing else.

Edit2: Whenever I play on extreme, I think I'm playing on normal. Maybe it's just unconscious damage from playing too much ridiculous, but it's WAY too easy.

You don't have to rush or use anything but basic tactics (build troops, move them towards enemy, obliterate enemy), and I personally don't use any known exploits, like loading up troops with tons of jewelry or kits (stuff that should get nerfed).  I build entirely normal troops.

And I do have fun beating up the AIs - it's just way too easy.  If I chilled and built up even more before finally attacking, it would be even easier because my troops would be exponentially more devastating.

At some point, AIs must be thrashed.  Either they declare on you, poach something you want, demand something ridiculous, look at you funny - whatever it is - they must be punished, usually by me exterminating them like vermin.

I'm a builder too but there just isn't that much to build.  I can get thru the tech tree pretty quick, to the point of having the end of tree techs in several trees and branches (some branches don't have much to them or much point to them either, but I still research the crap!), and be researching/learning level 10+ spells.  Once you get rolling in Elemental it's like a runaway freight train.

I usually have so many resources rolling in that there's not much point in bulding anymore, except to build troops, which leads to "hey, my troops look pretty kick ass and designing parties/squads of uber troops is actually kinda fun - now to try them out on something," which leads to, wow, I just rolled an entire AI empire in 10 turns and now have all these new beefy cities producing even more resources.  What next.  I wonder.  Rolling the wandering monsters isn't all that interesting because all you ever get out of it is gildar you don't need - and after slaying everything in sight just to have repops almost immediately, you start thinking, maybe I'll wipe out some mobs where there is a point - the AIs....

The builder side of the game just isn't compelling enough for me to want to sit around and build for ages like I would in GalCiv2 or Civ.  In those games, I want to colonize every possible planet or build cities in every empty space, build them up, tech up, THEN finally get around to figuring out how I'm going to win.  This is missing in Elemental to me.  In elemental I wanna build a tight, defendable empire, build up a little, then expand thru violence.  Totally not my style at all.

I have stil to win a game. Maybe is too easy for the experts of this type of games, but is not easy for everybody.

This is what disappoints me the most. The AI will eventually be fixed, but the strategic, empire building part of the game is much too shallow compared to Civ or GalCiv. I hope they add a lot more features to the strategic aspect, because I'm a builder and I hate going to war until absolutely necessary. But right now, going to war is the only thing fun in the game.

The largest problem with the AI, in my opinion, is that they will suicide their sovereign right into my base, 600 combat rating army vs my 800 combat rating army. But that's just one small problem, really. It's just the most disappointing.