I've noticed that the AI plays a very specific game. It is very industrious, so it plays fairly well in brute-force style factions like tech and Indians, but it struggles to grasp the the tech trees of factions like magic and science (although Indians has a little of both).
The point is: If factions appear unbalanced, it may only be because the AI can't figure them out. In multiplayer, I think creativity might make up many differences.
You made a very good point here. I don't think we care about how the AI plays a faction, I'm more interested in balancing the game for human vs human play so we can have interesting network games.
Some things I've noticed:
Horsemen extremely useful due to their speed, armor, low cost, and especially because of how easy to produce they are. They are really imbalanced. They have to have much less armor and attack power.
Armored swordmen are ok for defense, but quite useless to attack, and in general due to their low speed.
Siege units are not strong enough. Is not worth making them.
Other units like the
daemon giant are quite useless just because of the fact that they are really difficult to produce in large numbers. We might make it more expensive and much more powerful, so it is not necessary to make a lot of them.
Normal
daemons are also too powerful, they are extremely cheap quick and can stand a few hits.
Archmages are too weak and die really quick, so they can not use they really powerful attacks.
In general, is not worth exploring the tech tree with the tech faction, later units have to be stronger.
