Oh man... I just had the most EPIC game yet, for me.

It was on a modded difficulty, about twice as "hard" ridiculous. Each enemy unit had 8 times their normal health (instead of 4 on ridiculous) and the AI got 8 times as much resources (against 4 on ridiculous). I also turned off fog of war cheat for the enemy, since that seems to bug them.

For the last 300 turns I've been fighting back and forth over a few cities - lose one, gain one, never getting the upper hold. Just to put things in perspective, I would require at least 6 squads to defeat a single enemy squad. Magic was almost completely useless on the tactical level (what's 20 damage to an enemy unit with 800 health?). I had 5 casters with 16 essence each, just pumping out summons.

I was finally DEFEATED when the enemy sent a single "ruffian" (360 health) (dunno where they get them) that sneaked around my defended towns and killed my stack of casters (apparently, some tactical maps you can't escape from). About 100 turns later, with all my summoned units dead, I was destroyed by armies that outmatched me in every way (they even had dragons...).

It was on a huge map and the funny thing is... I wasn't even fighting the mightiest enemy. Supposedly Umber had four times the might of the enemy I was fighting.

It was the most fun I've had in this game yet.

I sincerely hope that they continue to improve the AI, as apparently, a game that is actually DIFFICULT is really quite FUN.

I wouldn't say I avoided them doomstacks, but I certainly didn't win against them, either.

It was more a case of continously grinding the doomstacks down, as their regeneration is almost nothing. That was their weak point, their massive health pools made then need more turns to regenerate to full health. When I lost all the crucial cities, the enemy had two doomstacks just going from city to city and oneshotting the defenders.

That's what I meant. The huge HP difference meant a direct assault is decidedly in their favor. So what I ended up doing is avoid the direct battle, ran around them and hit their vulnerable cities. Once most of their cities was down, and they could no long produce units effectively, I could afford to send waves of cheap sacrificial units at their army, weakening them until I could finally take them out and finish them off. I ended up taking a lot of losses on that 3rd AI, but I could always make more and he couldn't.

I've never lost either.  I generally end up with a ranged + AoE combo, the AI can't seem to handle ranged very well, I don't even need summons for it.  Once I get a few catapults it's usually game over for the AI.  If I go straight melee it can be a little tough, but there's still so many ways to skirt around the AIs poor ability anyway.

Things that to me make the AI too easy:

They don't use teleport

Their Sov doesn't seem to ever use magic in tactical battle

They rarely use ranged units, so I can have 70 attack archers with 0 defense and low HP

They don't flank around to undefended cities, instead slamming into 200-300 power defended ones with 100-150 power armies

They spread 1-2 units out into all their level 1 cities that are doing nothing, instead of pooling them into a high value city

They build every building in every city no matter what.  I also always see stuff like lvl 2 cities with 7-8 houses

They don't join up against a strong enemy, instead attacking each other more then me so you can be at war with everyone with no problem

They are basically playing gimped even on high difficulties, so its no wonder they don't do that well.  All my games have been push overs after a certain amount of turns, unless I get bad luck on a starting spot and even then it's just a matter of reaching the first good AI city and taking it since it will have little to no defense.

Hopefully that's all easy stuff to fix.

I lose the game to Memory Errors all the time.

I have yet to win a game because I have been playing on the largest maps and late game the crashes get too frequent.

This.

Can we petition Stardock to take your settings and use it for the default Ridiculus difficulty?

I had almost this exact same experience in my first 1.08 upgrade game, except my (not so uber) spellcaster group was attacked by some new monster (duasakalious or something like that) with 1200 hp, atk 24, def 24 (was not in the hiermenon). It soaked up a couple dozen fireball/firestorms, and I was only able to get it down to 600/700 hp. It ended up killing everything that couldn't retreat, and I retreated all my champions & sovereign with now 0 mana. I later found out they had three of these monsters & were somehow spawning them at a special monster site.

40 or so turns later I attacked an enemy AI city with a signficant attack force including my now moslty mana-regenerated spellcasters (it took me 30/40 turns to regenerate at 1 mana/turn). The city defense included 4 catapult 10-man squads with 600 hp, 100 atk, 10 defense. Again, my area spells were able to kill everything except the 4 catapults which I got down to 300 hp or thereabouts, I killed their sovering by the way. As soon as my initiative ran out it was their turn, and their catapults fired .. then it was game-over. Their catapult squads had a board-wide range and averaged 75 damage to each of my units per shot, my spellcasters averaged 20/30 hp. My guys became dead, dead, dead. Their catapults never missed & fired at least twice per shot. Once my spellcasters were gone it was game over as my soverign was killed & did not get resurrected for whatever reason .. the game lost animation screen was activated.

I agree with you though, this was the most exciting game of EWOW I ever played, but it was a complete anomoly. I've never played a game like this before or after, so I don't understand what went "right" with the AI in this particulat game but "wrong" in every other game.

I lost the very first two games I played after installing the game only because I hadn't developed a strategy yet and I was just playing to learn/tutorial-by-play. Starting from game 3 on, I've won every game except the one "anomaly" described above. The game winning tactic is city spam in EWOW. 

I lost once when Janusk razed my starting city on turn 2, before I clicked to recruit him in a game a couple patches back.  I guess that can count as an AI victory.

Otherwise?  I have never come close to losing.  I research summon spells, make bears and earth giants, and run around exploring while cranking out city spam to grab resources and push back the monster spawns.  I've tried not getting married to make the game harder (so no half-dozen freebie channelers).

I place ONE ... ONE staff-armed peasant per city for defense at first, then switch it to a small squad of archers, for the rest of the game.  I have never had one of my cities attacked or captured.  I've had enemy cites I've taken over get attacked and re-captured before, but never my own cities I have built.

I've lost more caravans to spiders than I thought possible ... never lost a city.  Honestly, I don't even recall more than once, the AI ever setting foot in my native lands, they usually fight among themselves if anything, then send little stacks against my Sov's attacking stack if they do anything at all.

Again though, I hear people complain about the AI being too easy, and others about it being too hard.  I think it just totally depends on if you are a half-arsed decent expander or not.  Which, sadly, doesn't say much about the current state of pre-1.1 AI ... if there is one surefire strategy to always win, and anything else equates to getting run over (or twiddling your thumbs bored while trying to figure out why the AI isn't attacking ever).  Hopefully they'll get a solid update in soon and make the AI more of a 1-trick pony.

Well I win most of the time with out even researching anything in the Magic tech. I will many times have a lot of casters but I have ad a few times when I only had one or two extra casters.  I have only been steam rolled once and that was the funnest game in Elemental I have had to date. It is also one of the few times that I have researched Magic tech.  Now the Empire is a lot stronger than the Kingdoms which is not right but hopefully they will fix this.

I never cheat and never reload. It just comes down to the same basic strategy works EVERYTIME.  I have played probably 10 full games all with the same outcome. Now if I purposely hold back I could probably make the game harder for myself but isn't the whole idea to win?

That's like going to a tank battle with a pistol.

If you immediately attack any enemies you see early in the game, the AI cannot counter your early rush and you can take over 1-2 factions very quickly which in turn gives you the huge lead.

I lost to the novice Ai quite frequently... it was until I buffed my sav that I was able to hold my own...

Wierd.. ive played about 12-15 games so far and only two games have been similair. Every other game was completely differnt. AI kicked my butt a few times...

But then again I play on BIG maps and I dont RUSH attack the computer at the start either, thats kinda pointless... I mean sure you can beat Fallout1 in 10 mins.. but why not enjoy it and make it last 30 hours? The way it was meant to be played?
I just dont see the point in attacking computer right off the bat, not fun to me at all. I like to build a bunch of cities up and then by then the computer has to and its really close games.

If the enemy is in sight of me why wouldn't you attack them knowing you could get some easy cities?  By acknowleging the weakness of the AI is basically admitting the game still needs some work in that area. 

I haven't tried multiplayer yet but most people that like turtle games probably won't play many multiplayer games because they will get crushed very quickly.  MP will all be balanced against the rush, sure this is a turn based game but people will play it like Starcraft, find the opposing players weakness and crush them, especially when the rankings start filling up online.

You won't have time to build up a big defense in order to have some epic end game, that's my impression, I could be wrong. You may find other players that want to drag a game out for 10 hours but I doubt many will have the patience for that.