In the recent games I've played (all recently on medium or large maps, ridiculous level) I executed the following plan:

• Let the opponents waste gold and materials on pioneers and founding settlements, I'll focus on making a horde of spear wielding peasants (all attack, little or no defense, maybe just a cuirass for a little defense)
• Grab all the goodie huts, Sovereign with starting 4 movement points is helpful
• Capital captures trump all other objectives - best locations for resources (have food and a few others)
• Get leather armor ASAP, hire some NPC heroes to tank in it, and build cheap spear wielding peasants for DPS
• Do not kill the Sovereigns until the cities are captured as killing the Sovereign destroys their cities and requires me to make new pioneers to expand - waste of time and resources as I'd rather be making spear wielding peasants and just gobble up their cities
• Zerg and create constant supply lines of spear wielding peasants
• Focus on one enemy/front at a time. Ruthless zerg and capture of their cities, kill Sovereign after his/her cities are captured.
• Teleportation and Return makes this a breeze later as I can pop all over the map transporting my zerg army whereever its needed

At least in my games this has been a successful plan to steamroll the AI early on and consolidate a massive empire that offsets any AI economic bonuses the opponents receive from the difficulty level. Thus, I recommend buffing capital city defense somehow to mitigate the early steamroll (I have a post in the ideas section of the forum). A capital city left standing would not stop my zerg but would slow it down a bit and expose my supply lines.

Thanks for listening.

[edit]

I did some more thinking about this. In GalCiv2, initial blitzkriegs were limited by both ship range and the technology to invade colonies was pretty high up the tech tree. Neither of those limitations exist in Elemental. Thus, the AI doesn't have time to build up their cities or armies to offset the human zerg attack like they could in that game. Somehow the limitations provided in GalCiv2, which helped make those games epic on the hardest difficulty level, need to be incorporated here. How should the AI keep their:

• Sovereign alive and protected
• Capital in their own hands
• Minor cities in their own hands

Some ideas? Maybe buff the Sovereign talent that allows the city they're in to be applied always apply to their capital even if the Sovereign is elsewhere? Buff the spell a bit by increasing attack, defense, hp? Grant some range attack towers as default city defense? Let the Sovereign apply the buff to whichever city he resides but if he's camped in his capital, double-buff the capital city? Give all the AI sovereigns that talent? I'm not sure of the correct answer as all of this has to be balanced at a both strategic and tactical level. I think someway to mirror the limitations that GalCiv2 put on initial zerg attacks should be duplicated in Elemental that's consistent with lore, makes practical sense, and longer-term could be applied to multiplayer. Anyway food for thought. Thanks for listening. 

"First rule in this game: Any sovereign I can kill, I will kill."

 

That's an exciting sharing!! - just hope 1.1 can release asap for me those cant online all the while to play... 

Battle is fun, no doubt, However, I am kind of worry if AI - will thinks like that as well, that will be "too uncivilized" like Civ 5.

 

We have few victory ways for Elemental,  I think would be great if all victory way are equally achievable. AI having their own preference as well.

 

 

 

 

I could, yes. But I shall leave the task of discovering how up to you.

City Walls.

They would stop early steam-roll tactics, as you would have to create a siege army, which takes tech and time.

Good idea. Much more simple than my bloviation.

All my girls strike this pose or close to it.  They look good too......

Y'know, "invasion tech" is not a bad idea despite city walls being around.  You could make it so invaders need to research a few things until they get 100% effectiveness vs. cities.  That would make fights outside of cities more normal for awhile, and let the AI have more time... not to mention less chance of losing your cities in the early game.

Rather than the cost, I'd prefer the limiter to be in the teleport process. For example, a unit can only teleport between places they've already been. If each unit had to create teleport waypoints at each physical teleport location they wanted to pop between, and if there was a limit to the number of teleport waypoints, the cost and number of units in the stack would become far less relevant. But this has all been discussed to death.

Morale might be a good counter. Similar to Civ, after a town changes hands require it to be garrisoned for X turns in order to pacify the population else there's a chance it will revolt and return to the original owner. You either spend longer building up forces prior to the rush so you can garrison the cities you take, or you're forced into a consolidation phase every few cities in order to keep them. Either gives the AI a little more time to prepare, while still leaving the option of a surprise raid open to the player (i.e. you could grab cities and let them rebel just to disrupt the enemy economy, or you could go on a raid and plunder and simply raze the cities, but you can't make a quick grab for the empire).

Flaw regarding all 4X games:

The diplomacy is always based on who has the biggest sword (who's got the strongest, largest army). Every AI leader has the same mentality / character: "if my nation can conquer their nation, then it will."

Please set Elemental apart from all other 4X games and do something unique. Give AI leaders some hidden stats such as:

• aggressiveness: How eagerly an opponent leader will engage in warfare, quest hunting, expansion, etc.
  
• recklessness: The size and frequency of an opponent leader taking risks such as committing entire armies to one task, or going to war with stronger opponents, etc.
  
• pride: How much the opponent leader is willing to forgive past conflicts with a nation. For example, an extremely proud leader may be stubborn and devote himself to taking revenge on a nation that has wronged him in the past.
  
• empathy: How likely the opponent leader is willing to embrace another peaceful nation and make diplomatic ties REGARDLESS of the strength of their armies. A highly empathetic leader may wish to form alliances with smaller, insignificant nations rather than go to war with them.
  

By assigning each opponent these four example attributes set to various random values, the game will be far more enjoyable since the player will not know what to expect from each other opponent. No longer will the automatic solution be: Ah, an enemy, kill them all!

edit: also, please don't mix the terms "seasons" and "turns". If they're both the same thing, use one and only one.

edit 2: also, please find some better alternative to teleportation of defeated enemy sovereigns. It just cheapens the impact of battle with them. And when a sovereign is killed, instead of magically removing all of their cities, turn them into independent states or assign one of the sovereign's children as the new leader.

turns better not get slower as its gets later into the game

Sounds good.

Best regards,
Steven.