3 stacks of tough, well-upgraded troops can defeat 10 stacks of troops that mix their tier IV stuff with summoned crows and drones and don't position them properly. Once you get to armies of more than just a couple of stacks, this game favours quality over quantity.

Research all the good upgrades, and build your fewer troops in cities where they get bonuses from mystic city sites and plenty of free medals. Militarily, you won't match AI numbers, but you can outmatch them in quality. Sure, the AI will probably still have bigger cities and more gold, but you'll have better cities. This isn't trivial, but it's quite doable even against the highest level (cheaty) AI.)Įconomically, you can catch so through placing your cities better, (more income from treasure sites!) clearing more sites for funding, improving your morale through terraforming and nabbing Heart structures and whatnot. You have to use the time to catch up to the AI. So they can't mushroom across the map faster than you can.īut the cities they get do grow faster, so you can't waste time even on large maps. The game is set up to nerf even high difficulty AI: they can only build a few more cities than you can. Later game, even if the AI is still stronger in absolute terms, it's not as risky. If I lose once I pretty much lose the game, but the AI isn't that smart so I usually don't.

I can still win wars at this point, mind you, but it involves gathering up every single last scrap of troops I can find and staking it all on one decisive battle. You can keep up by (ab)using mind-control strategies, but since I don't I generally find myself outclassed for the first 20-30 turns of a game. Generally, in the early game on high difficulty maps the AI will be much stronger than you: their early research boosts gets them casting points more quickly, their starting armies are bigger and their income and production boosts let them get off the ground faster. But: Don't high difficult AI also have an advantage to build huge empires on large maps, before they meet me?

Age of wonders 3 where do roaming units