Definitely gonna check that AI setting out!(sick of losing ).

Oops meant to say that the HD version of AI is smarter and meaner, not newer and meaner, oh well. I'm trying out the other gameplay options, like Turbo Random Map, King of the Hill, Wonder Race, etc...

Okay I decided to try the Death Match in the Black Forest on my desktop(so it's the original Conquerors expansion, not the HD version), and it is hard. I'm on moderate/standard difficulty, and the other civs are just NOT cooperating...

The problem with Black Forest can often be just getting lost in the trees. You can't always find resources (except for wood) and you never know where your enemy is. For this reason, I like to set the visibility to reveal everything. This also allows me to watch my enemies and study their movements and progress.. though that may not be entirely fair.
And yes, enemy civs rarely cooperate.
Do you have allies? Sometimes they may as well be enemies for all the help they provide...
I'm gonna try out that AI setting and see how things go. Thanks for the tip BTW!

Oh I always set the Reveal Map setting to All Visible myself, I don't care if it's 'fair', I'm playing to win!

And you're welcome.

OK, apparently the AI was already set to original, which seems to indicate that... I really just need to practice more!
Which civ do you find the hardest to fight against?

Never really thought about it, since in most cases, using All Visible and supply cheat codes means it doesn't really matter who I'm fighting against, they're going down. Probably the Chinese, since they start out with more villagers and need less resources for researching, which is why I'm trying them now in the Black Forest Death Match...just trying to find a map where I get a lake in my original territory first.

For me it probably goes between the Huns (for obvious reasons) and the Goths (those Huskarls are tougher than they look). I'm trying to wean myself off of cheat-code dependency and it's hard. AI units seem to have individual lives; they move around and start fighting at the same time, can go in all different directions, and seem to actually seek out where to go.(And that's on original setting). Meanwhile my units have to be ordered one at a time (or one group at a time). Frustrating how fast the enemy can move both physically and progressively because of that.

I've been doing 4 enemy civs per game, but now I'm gonna try the Black Forest Death Match with just two. I don't care if that's considered 'easy', I won't be using cheat codes, that's one advantage of Death Match, you don't have to bulk up your supplies much.

I've mostly played with just one enemy, but am going to start playing multiples soon. (right now though, one seems to be hard enough).
Do you usually start in Post-Imperial Age or Dark Age? It would seem that your resources even in Death Match would get drained too easy with aging up... although that's exactly what I've been doing.

I start in Dark Age. Aging up really isn't that draining on your food, you start with so much already, and I use castles as my main defensive force, so I just need lots of stone which isn't too hard, since I always set my resources to high as well when starting a game. If I win my death match against two civs, will let you know.

Yay, I won! It was touch and go for a while there though, but I was lucky. My strategy was have a map where the other civs can only get to me through 'narrow' paths, and I had a villager standing by so when I hit Feudal Age, they could build a stone wall to keep the enemy at bay until I hit Castle Age, then with two more villagers helping, I built a castle on my side of the wall, then on the other when the first castle could protect the villagers. Then you hit Imperial Age and get bombard towers to help protect the castles. The green civ was Henry Tudor I think...they had built near a lake, so when I had cleared a safe zone on one side, I built a dock and got some (cannon) galleons to take out as many of their buildings as possible. They didn't even upgrade their militia! I had already taken out the red civ.

So I get them to waste their forces trying to take out my walls and castles, and then they can't rebuild such a massive force before I lay waste to them myself! Muhahaha!

Good going! I have a game going in Mongolia against the Saracens, and although no fighting has happened yet, I'm feeling rather pessimistic about it; they aged up faster than I did because as the Huns I'd had the brilliant idea to build 20 militia and go on the attack, hoping to end the game in Dark Age, but they aged up and built 40 or so men at arms, so my plans kinda got changed. Still building up to the big battle, but it's up in the air as to who will win.
It's funny how we kind of own this thread! Maybe we need to make it a new one!

Ok, I tried winning in Dark Age again, and it worked!!!
The key seems to be to use a smaller map; that way the enemy can't progress as much before you reach them. I just built a handful of barracks, turned out about 40 militia, and attacked until they surrendered. What helped is that I went up to Feudal Age during the attack, so I could upgrade my militia to men at arms in the middle of the fight! This time the enemy didn't age up in time, so I slaughtered their dozen or so militia with ease!!

Congrats! I'm now trying to win Death Match in the Capricious map, and this time the map gives you tons of all resources plus you already start with huge amounts. Only 2 enemy civs this time though.

And does anyone here own one of those NES/SNES mini consoles? Been thinking about getting them, but would like more opinions before I do. Not interested in the PS Classic one, only game on there I'd bother with is FFVII and I already have the original and the Steam version, so no need to waste the money.