By the sounds of your play style you'd be better off not standing alone. Forge an alliance and put up a united front to intimidate your enemies so they dont attack you.

Ofcourse there's always the warmonger AI , the drengin empire in galciv... Montazuma in Civ....., but if you don't want to go to war turn them off because dimplomacy isnt an option.

dragoaskani, yes, but to reach those winning conditions I am forced to protect my borders much more than once against aggressive AI players.

Researching magic doesn't help, because it is much more slowed-down now. I am usually ganged up on much before I can research these spells, and that is on the Easy difficulty.

cfehunter, I'll give you a very similar reply: you're right, but the problem is I am usually attacked much before I can even forge a single alliance (by other empires of men, not even by 'Fallen' empires), let alone have a non-aggression treaty with anyone. The problem is I get 'picked on' at the start and instead of developing and reaching a point where I have allies, or strong magic, or decent economy, the bottom line is that each and every game turns into large-scale battle, and that is really not how I want to play through it.

So, you don't want to be a "warmonger", but you want to put back in the ridiculously overpowered early game summoning spells that allow you to roll over half the map with infinite units that units that have no material costs, before anyone can possibly resist you?

Spyndel, Well, the problem started because you guys used these spells offensively. I used these spells to protect my borders.

Perhaps a compromise would be to have these spells early on, but prevent these summoned creatures from leaving the city borders? Nah, someone will already find a way to exploit that as well, I'm sure. There's just no way to please everyone, and that sucks.

You definitely don't need to be a warmonger in order to win in these types of games.  What you do need, as has been pointed out, is an army in order to prevent others from attacking you.

Although I do see the point you are making, you should approach the problem differently then you are.  Rather than blaiming the AI and saying it's too difficult, why not ask others for opinions on how to improve your game?

Make a separate posting giving a little more detail as to what is happening and ask for some assistance.  Since you are getting ganged up on, then it's pretty obvious that the AI sees you as an easy target.  If you make yourself a harder target, then this won't happen.

My guess is is that you are the type that likes to really build up and get "settled" first.  You are, thus, leaving yourself open in the beginning because you are neglecting your army and spending most everything on buildings.  Since you are getting ganged up on, focus on warfare in the very beginning.  After 2 or 3 in warfare (1 being in weapons, obviously), then go for the others.  And, then, make sure to build more forces than you have been doing in your last games.  All civilizations need a decent army to survive, whether they be a peaceful one or a warlike one.

I am by no means a warmonger, except for the few times I feel like playing one, but I for sure always prepare for war.

One of things I like most about GalCiv 2 is the fact that the AI presents a challenge without cheating. I hate when I have to raise up the difficulty level in a game and catch the AI cheating. Sure, it makes it a lot more difficult to win, but it spoils the fun. I don't have this issue with GalCiv 2

Martialdoc, I like your point of view on the matter and the fact that you described my playstyle very accurately. I like settling and turtling more than anything. 

I tried your approach in a game, but it didn't work right and the AI still attacked me early on before I had anything prepared for him and we traded blows for turns and turns until I grew tired of it.

Dracil, I'm wasn't demanding anything, I was expressing my frustration with this continuing issue with Stardock's games. I think there should be at least an option that will allow players to choose the aggressiveness of the AI in general, which shouldn't affect your prefered playing style.

I agree that I'd like to see some changes to the AI in this area. There should be more factors at work in a decision to declare war than just relative strength. If people want a more violent game, you could have a tickbox which changes it back to how it is now.

I want to see more shades of gray as it were. There should be long term tribute agreements that guarantee security. Right now if an AI asks me for money, I won't pay because I know they'll just invade in the next few turns anyway. If it was a deal that I pay say 25% of my income to them, for the next 100 turns, and in return they will declare war on anyone who attacks me (they'd want to protect their tribute source after all), that's a deal I might well take. I think there's a lot of cool stuff that could be done with diplomacy in these kinds of games that hasn't been explored yet. More complicated treaties between multiple nations, AIs with their own personalities and diplomatic goals (e.g. hate everyone and never ally, or try and build a big alliance, or try and protect the weak) which I think could make games more interesting. It would be very difficult to code and display of course, but I can dream

ThebigJ_A, yeah, but turtling is building large defensive walls and very strong defensive units which could take a hit or two  (that what I was doing with my summoning spells, mind you), not training and maintaining and micromanaging dozens of citizens with sticks. And as Sethfc pointed out in the first page - no matter how much I stress training an army, the AI is much more effecient at it than me, because I also love building and researching and exploring.

Wilson, I completely agree. I really like your 'Protectorate treaty' idea.

When I play GalCiv 2 I quite often have the same issue as you Gormoth. I tend to be more building/researching by nature, so often the AI gets ahead of me in combat technology. I tend to do some research into weapons, get some decent ships to get my strength rating up, then ignore warfare techs for a while until I fall behind again, and repeat that process. I would like other ways of keeping enemy civs off my back that aren't military power.

On one hand I agree with people that say the weak will always get conquered by the strong, but I think it depends how you want to play the game. If you want a straight competition, as if you were playing humans, then how the AI works currently is what you want. If you want a more immersive world though, it doesn't make sense. In reality there are more elements involved than a flat comparison of military power. Maybe there should be technologies available which make you less appealing to conquer (e.g. something that makes your towns stay in rebellion not doing anything for ten/twenty turns after they are captured, or something which means all the other AI dislike someone more if they attack you). So you have other ways of protecting yourself than just building up a military. At a basic level though, a protectorate system is probably the easiest to implement, and probably the most simple.

EDIT: @3Havoc - You're right, but this is a fantasy game, so I think you could do some more interesting things. And certainly in the modern world, small nations who are not competitive militarily don't constantly get invaded by everyone else just because they're weak. Obviously that's not necessarily applicable to a fantasy game, but that's where I'm coming from. Even if it doesn't make that much sense, I'd like to see that kind of dynamic in the game.

I always found it's too easy to be diplomatic in GC2 (only played with expansions though). I have what I consider a bad habit of playing with diplomacy and researching tech instead of going to war, and in GC2 it's too effective, as it's in Elemental. It's a bad habit because the diplomacy can still be played against the AI more easily than straight war, and usually no AI race will be in good relations with others. It's too easy to become a superpower in peace.

I haven't yet seen any aggressive AIs in Elemental, they're mostly just sitting there. In my opinion an aggressiveness slider would be an easy solution (if the AI really is that aggressive), but in an ideal world there would be techs, spells and diplomatic options that allow a more peaceful playstyle. It would be cool if there were spells that would defend the caster's area of influence by weakening/attacking attackers, or maybe supplying magical defenders to any town that gets attacked.

As mentioned in earlier posts, the diplomacy needs more options. I don't like straight cease-fire/peace/alliance, they're too powerful if AI goes for them easily. There should be options for tributes, conditional peaces and such. Peaces without drawbacks tend to favour the player, players can more effectively force a peace with everyone, or any opponent in position to threaten, and then build a huge economic and technological advantage and steamroll opposition, or win with a Master Spell without having seen a war. I often tend to win this way in GC2, and even in Sword of the Stars (which is WAY more about war) I sometimes end up being left alone, and then winning easily. I don't like that sort of wins, they require no effort.

I'm all for more peaceful playstyles (in addition to war) as long as they aren't clearly the easier option towards victory. They should require different focus and playstyle, but still be complex (and rewarding) to achieve.

Personally, I tend to enjoy most the victories that end up burning most of the world/galaxy with few left alive. I'm really disappointed that the star killer thing in GC2 is so ineffective, I want to destroy worlds

Gormoth1,

So you need a mod where Heros are awesome and cities can be built up with defence modifiers (ie, +x to armor/hp/attack when defending in city etc)  +enemy heros are 99% defending their cities only.

I can happily say that i aim to make a mod like that in the near future with modified items and spells.