A light in the dark

So I start off and found the Town of Anig. However the first thing that catches my eye is Raline the Weaver. She has 96 hp and an attack of 2. The first thing that I do is recruit her. And the instant she starts working for me her Hp drops to 9. This does not bode well. 

My town grows to lvl 2 quickly and I set to work building things. Inspiration costs 16 mana to cost on this difficulty. Ouch!. Still, I manage to throw up at least one burst of of insperation, so hopefully researching my first technology won't take too long...

And then a bandit hits the town. It has 80 hp. I don't have time to do build any more defensive units, and die.  I manage to get it down to half hp, but... in the end, it is futile.

Well... that was short.

Does anyone know what level has the highest enemy ai but doesn't have the computer cheating?

Normal is the highest difficulty without cheating.

If you don't want to get killed by bandits in turn 2, don't put every point into research, metal, mana, gildar, food, arcane knowledge, charisma, and diplomacy.

would it really have allowed my channeller to do another 40 points of damage? And then survived the second bandit one turn behind him with 60 or so hp?

[edit] played it a bit more from the autosave. So I have the first bandit, a second bandit, and a bear that all seem to want to kill me in the first 25 turns no matter what I do. I guess I am not a good enough player to play on this level yet, because I have no clue how to survive.

Well, you're playing on one of the highest difficulties as well. So you have a setup that is completely unprepared for any resistance, and you're facing unusually many monsters that are extra hard because of the options. So really, what tips more than that do you want? If you can't beat it, adapt or make it easier.

Fair enough, I just thought it would be more like Galciv where for the most part the AI just got smarter. I guess I'll give it another shot on normal.

Don't forget to use arcane arrow to tip the scales in the early battles. Also, get the After the War mod from the mods section. It really makes things better. 

Well, I played a game on normal and got so powerful that nothing scared me, and it didn't take me too long either. But maybe I got lucky and I'll give it a second chance. I found that if I can survive the first wave of monsters with my strategy, then I never have to worry about anything for the rest of the game. 

Like I said, I'll do it again on normal so that people can see my strategy as a whole. Then if I win, I'll go up one difficulty level. We'll see how far I make it.

It says so in the menue if you checkit out and then CTRL+F difficulty.
I think its normal or the level above.

I always started my sov off with the best gear I could buy'em, this way you would be hard pressed to be killed off too early, this & if your really having a hard time then choose the sov option that allows you to have two units start off with you, plus you can pick a 'guardian' creature when your city lvls if need be

Okay, time for an after action report.

I did the set up the same as last time except on normal difficulty.

I started in a decent location and built my first city. The first thing I did was focus all my research on getting libraries. My sovereign wandered around a bit, but as soon as I recruited my first champion they took over and my sovereign went home. I built two other towns and ran into the kraxis, or whatever they are called. I paid them for the longest time to stop them from declaring war on me as my three towns grew to be cities and I became the most learned civ in the world.

Then I missed a payment.

They attacked and took first one city, than the other. They killed my wife and my daughter. I fought back with an army of girls with great swords. No armor, just a big sword. An interesting glitch showed up. Even if I killed an enemy unit in one hit, they got to retaliate. It was a close battle but I took back my two cities. Slowly I pressed into their territory and took over all their cities, killing their sovereign, but not before he killed a son.

*Sigh*

After that I slowly expanded, while continuing to study new forms of war. When a nearby civ declared war I built 48 riders, led by my son and daughter in law to attack them. The riders were outfitted with the best of everything non-magical. Master-craft armor and shields, karazans. They rode horses.

The war lasted a very short time.

My enemy begged for peace and I decided to give it to him. He only had 3 towns left and I controlled his capital.

And that was pretty much the end of the game. I played around for a long while, built an army of 48 gold rides which had the best of everything except for legendary armor. But I was just putting off the inevitable.

Eventually I had to call the spell of mastery and win the game.

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Things I learned:

Cities are broken. Really. if you destroy a natural improvement that is within the walls you free up extra space to build. And after you have filled the space you can rebuild the improvement. Wash and repeat. I found this out after the last war, but it was how I researched my crystal gathering to 500% effectiveness so easily.

If you can survive early on, Research can make you a god.

The AI doesn't plan very well. At one piont I saw another civ that had 2 crystal deposits near their city, within their control, and they weren't harvesting them, and didn't seem to have the tech to harvest them. I try to play peaceful when they can so I blew some magic and built a city as close as I could using magic hammers (X4) and Fertility (x7) I think I had the city complete in 5 years or so. I easily put my influence around the city so that it couldn't expand and took the crystal depots for my own.

Well, now I'll have to try again on challenging.

Uh, the AI did not get smarter in Galciv.  The AI cheated, big-time.

I disagree i played a lot in galciv and imho it was the most reacting feeling alive AI i have meet in any game.Not sure what you mean by cheating but if you mean bonus to resarch resources etc. it said in beginig clearly when choosing difficulty level at which level AI gets advantages.I lawys played the hardest without any advantage to the computer and itwas alwys fun.

It was actually the only game i really felt the IA is reacting to what im doing, how im designing my ships.

Yeah, by cheating I mean all the bonuses.   More often than not I played on suicidal, and the game was all about how to string the AI along and play his own bonuses against him.  The AI did not really get smarter; it just got a lot of bonuses to keep it challenging.  I believe they did dumb down the AI way down at the Beginner and Fool difficulty levels, but at that point the AI's so effete you're really playing against the clock and not the AI.