I really can't agree with you here.  I'm mediocre at best at strategy games and I destroy the AIs in GalCi2 on difficulties with the AI fully enabled without using the moronic exploits that are built into the game design.

As for elemental, the summoning didn't go away entirely, just the stupid cheese part of being able to start the game with an uber summoned unit ridiculously early.  If you research lvl 2 spells, which you can do immediately if you want to, you have reasonable summons available very early still.  Push to lvl 3 spells immediately and you can summon a fire giant and it's still pretty early.  Summons were broken, summons needed addressed.

Plus, if once you get rolling and learn how to make parties/squads, you'll pretty much forget about summons, since even a noob party of 4 combined troops is devastating.  Next up for the nerf bat, parties and squads.  Just watch.

Trust me.  Research logistics so you can make parties.  Research the first weapon and armor tech and the medical kit tech.  Then you can put together death squads (I say squads but technically it's a "party" of 4) of relatively cheap uber units that will make summons, champions, and your sov look like chumps.

 The trick with GalCiv2, this game, or similar games isn't necessarily that you need to be a hardcore wargamer.  But especially with Stardock games you DO need to learn how to properly field effective troops.  Elemental has the "mystery" feel (ie, it doesn't give you a shred of a clue what to do) but it's not that tough to create units that will protect you (even if you don't want to thrash the crap out of everything around you).

 Anyways, as a side note, in GalCiv2 it's easy to build forces to deter AI aggression - you just need to have the clue.  The clue is, defenses are cheap and insanely powerful.  The game goes in phases and fairly early on the AIs shift towards military (after exploring/settling).  At this point, you need to as well because the game isn't just SimCity the planetary version.  Examine nearby AIs, see what the most common type of attack type being uses is - research the appropriate defense for it.  Research a little bit of offense.  Build ships with a heavy ratio of defense vs offense.  Because, the way the game works, you can easily stack so much defense it makes your ships nearly invulnrable and the AIs tend to build defenseless paper cannons.  When you fight, your ships will own theirs.  If you use the correct approach.

Lastly, GC2, Elemental, Civ, these are all games that include war.  So you must partake in some element of war build up or all you do is build up juicy cities/planets/whatever that look really attractive to anybody who has an army.  This is not SimCity.  If all you want to do is build up cool stuff, you should probably play a simulator game that doesn't include combat.  It's entirely possible to pursue peaceful victories in all of these games, but being peaceful is NOT the equivalent of being stupid, you still need to posture or have defenses to deter aggressors.

I apologize but i couldn't figure out how to edit the A.I sufficently so here.

Heres one more Idea. Gor since its so hard to effectively combat the A.I in the beginning and i didn't feel like it here's what to do.

go to your my documents/my games folder and go to elemental. Select the units folder. Inside you will find your sovereigns name. Use Notepad or wordpad to open this file and then Edit the Sovereigns attributes.

This won't stop the A.I from being utterly bitchy towards you *And demanding ridiculous amounts of wealth in exchange for peace or other deals which is i admit abit annoying when my trade contract is worth 40 and theirs is worth 90 or similar for other things* But you can be strong enough to push them back. Unlike most players you'll likely not use this to your advantage to walk into their cities but rather to defend yourself. So i think its fair to buff yourself up abit. You can also buff your custom unit designs abit to make them stronger too.

Hopefully this makes playing the game abit easier for you Sorry for the inconvenience.

I understand where the OP is coming from being more of a builder/researcher/turtler myself, but I honestly don't understand how you are getting ganged up on by the current AI. I've played several games now on normal and challenging difficulty and the AI always leaves me alone all game long. It's gotten to the point that it's quite boring and I wish the AI was more aggressive, not less. I want the AI to at least put a little pressure on me as I make my way to one of the mastery victories.

The only thing it sounds like I'm doing different from you is that the first research I do is a few key war techs. Then as I can afford it pump out some early peasants and then observers for defense. 2 observers per city is all you need to deter the AI early on and they are not expensive. I also find getting 4 good city sites early on with a good mix of resources is crucial before you start turtling. Fortunately it's easy to rush the AI to the good spots and peasants make good scouts since for some strange reason all the creatures wandering the wilds rarely attack either. If the AI does become threatening I have the techs to pump out some squads with better equipment to push them back. With this basic defense in place I then ignore the AI and go about questing with my champions and researching the other 4 trees to my hearts content. If the AI on my borders looks like they are building up an army I'll switch to a few more war techs and build a few more troops with better equipment and then go back to ignoring them. They leave me alone. It's rather dull right now. I want them to attack me once in a while so I can smack them down.

All of that being said, an aggressiveness slider for the AIs is a pretty basic feature that I would certainly support. More differentiation between the different AI factions would also be good, I get the sense they are all the same currently rather than having different AI personalities and priorities.

This happens in every game of every genre when their is a patch that changes balance or nerfs certain styles of play. Gal Civ 2 has had several expansions and tons of patches and is bar none the best space strategy game in existence. After patches and expansions changes to play style were necessary and you likely didn't account for that, you were basically playing a whole new game.

The other game I am most familiar with where this has happened a lot is Diablo 2. Some character types just get phased out of existence and people cry because they can't solo anymore but all that needs to happen is a little tweaking. Isn't overcoming a challenge the reason why we play these games?

There's really no need to apologize, Sethfc, it can actually work as a nice workaround!

I think I'll use it as a last resort only, because this feels a bit like cheating, but it is still very much appreciated! Thanks!

cwg009 and Simsum, thanks alot for the tips! Regarding the hoarding of resources, and against my nature, I tried using them as much as I could, but then I got into some money problems because I over spent on soldiers, silly me

I'll have to fine-tune it a bit and learn how to better play the game, but I opened this thread because I wanted to try and prevent Stardock from listening to just the hardcore types that like to play on the hardest difficulty and kill everyone in 5 minutes like what happened in Galciv 1 and 2, but to also cater to players of my playstyle as well.

I'll use the tips I gathered here as much as I can and try to play on larger maps, that might surely help, thanks everybody!

Me I Perfer being peaceful. Exploring my territory building a small quality over quantity *to the extreme* defensive force. and building trade with my neighbors. mostly being isolationist except for trade. untill i have sufficent power. Or enough men to overwelm one of my neighbors. whichever has the least value to me tradewise or the most value to me strategically. After taking them i whittle down either my allies or if by taking the first target i see more weak or medium strength neighbors. I use my allies to declare war on them *bribing 2-3 allies into war* then procede to sweep in as the war unfolds capturing cities *or planets in galcivs case8 when possible.

I guess i like to think of things in a covert and turtling fashion. Often i spend all of my resources on technology to try to gain the edge.