Is it the end?

[Ango1eiro]

Medium difficulty. I was constantly defending against this Uram from almost very beginning (always assaulting my lodges, then melding my nodes). After every fight our relations were falling. Then I decided to defeat her and was pretty succesfull until only her main tower left (750 army + 2 medusas). I retreated, but she kept sending full stack armies against me, thereby lowereing our relations even more. Then a message from her appeared (declaration of war I guess) and these doomstacks were spawned. My best army is around 750 and I totally can't compete against this. Is it GG? It seems AI doesn't even pay any gold\mana for it armies or hire units, it just spawn stacks. Seems pretty unfair. Is it intended or am I missing something?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2929322826

[Helmet Hair]

Yes

[primetide_dev]

Originally posted by Ango1eiro:

Medium difficulty. I was constantly defending against this Uram from almost very beginning (always assaulting my lodges, then melding my nodes). After every fight our relations were falling. Then I decided to defeat her and was pretty succesfull until only her main tower left (750 army + 2 medusas). I retreated, but she kept sending full stack armies against me, thereby lowereing our relations even more. Then a message from her appeared (declaration of war I guess) and these doomstacks were spawned. My best army is around 750 and I totally can't compete against this. Is it GG? It seems AI doesn't even pay any gold\mana for it armies or hire units, it just spawn stacks. Seems pretty unfair. Is it intended or am I missing something?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2929322826

Uram should not attack you unless his relationship is below 110 ith you, so there is some control there. Sometimes it is better to move away than risk annoying him further.
The game scales wih time, so the longer you are in defensive battles or lag behind in ressource acquisition, the more th difficulty may escalate.

Startig in another region, lowering difficulty and keeping the circle happy bit longer are all was around that. e are loooking into more customizable difficulty as well.

[Ango1eiro]

Well, I guess balanced difficulty is not that balanced or I was just unlucky. I was being attacked by beasts from north, by orcs from south, by her (i didn't noticed how reached 110 with Uram) from west and there was a guy on the east with ethereal units, so I was really afraid of him, (though he didn't attack me) and decided to move west. I guess unless player knows all these stuff about relations and AI agression first try is doomed.
P.S. I reloaded earlier save and suicided my army against her main tower, she lost. Will there be any conseqences? I mean Is there any point in continuing to play further or another doom event will spawn? I have 132 relations with another guy.

[Elindos Phar & Family]

"first try is doomed" is like extracting a general rule for all players from your "personal experience". I don't think that's how people should proceed.

"balanced" difficulty is not about "not being afraid of anything" imo. It should give us a beating and danger, that's exactly correct here.

What you told here is about how an average difficulty should be in my opinion, giving you some "challenge and danger" especially considering developers always advise first game to be played in some kind of "easy mode".

Considering the number of ways we can inflate units, destroy our own economy on our own (that's the real risk in a first game imo) and try to find a good balance, it's not as if the player can have a balanced way of doing things either. I have no way of knowing how balanced you were yourself, how good your actions were.

"balancing relations" is more into picking the right decisions in adventures, not offending an AI, not feeling overpowered and always making a plan A and plan B. I like games where plans can fail and backup plans can be necessary.

Good luck in your game!
And if you have lost, well then +1 to the game itself, balanced means some victories and some defeats, you had a good game already. :)