I am completely in line with you there since I don't see the need for maintenance in Elemental as well. I'm just saying that Civ's approach did its job. But there's nothing like essence in that game.

Depends on how good the AI will be, if it's comparable to the AI in GalCiv2 9which I expect from Brad) the first slider could be usefull for some people. If I remember correctly the AI in GalCiv2 would get some bonus starting at the Painfull level, but some were complaining they couldn't win the game at THough / Hard. They were mostly beginners I guess, but it's always nice to have the option to start out at a somewhat easier level and go to some harder level once you know the game.

Civ4 had toggles for "No War", "Always War/Peace", "No Tech Brokering", "More Aggressive Barbarians" etc.

If they're going to add these features, better to make them as toggles you can pick individually rather than a slider which gives you far less control.

I don't wish to start an arguement, but how would sliders, an inherently degree-based system, give you less control than boolean "on-off" switches?

None the less, the point isn't how its implemented, they could make different exe's for all I care. I just think the idea should be implemented. Some like kingdom sims, some like zerg-rush's. Having that option independent of difficulty and any "AI bonus handicap" option would give players more options - always a good thing

It's rather odd that I find myself defending Endofdayz, but I realy must point out that (s)he said sliderS, as in one for each thing. You would have the thing being all the way not preasant at one end, and all the way presant at the other, but the strength of each machanic would also be changeable, in a way that oolean checkboxes simply cannot replicate (unless, I suppose, there were a whole lot of them for each mechanic.....)

I hope that nothing even similar to the original concept stated is placed within the game.

If the player is doing well then why should he be punished for that? Sure there should be a system that slows progress (the constantly mentioned internal politics and economic trouble system would cover quite well) as if the player has built a solid backing for his/her faction over time then it's no big deal, he played well and is reaping the rewards.

IMHO Gameplay should be equal, The AI and the player should both have the same positives and negatives for doing certain things, to me it feels fairly shoddy when a developer gives a bonus to the AI to balance things out. If things are (and should be) balanced out correctly then even the smaller players should be able to give the bigger ones an "uh oh" moment. Elemental already has a little of this, you could as a smaller player by some side-quest recruit one of the bigger monsters (like a dragon) and use it tactically to deal some serious damage.

Also there is a flaw with this uber stack idea, if it was summoned and managed to push the player into a corner do they get an uber stack? or are they just robbed of their win cause they couldn't defeat one troop even though they had outmanuvered the AI well enough beforehand to get to that situation? that seems like an unfair punishment through and through...

sorry to say psycoravin but this idea gets a  from me, it would need a LOT of balance revision before I could consider it a possibility as a welcome addition to the game.

I just played my first game of Twilight of the Arnor this weekend - I have to say I was surprised at the AI improvements over original GalCiv2. (Now won't I look stupid if there were no AI changes!) On normal difficulty it seemed to give me a lot better of a game, with the AI reacting as I would expect another human to react - I was going for an ascension victory and was very pleased at the AI's reaction and repeated efforts to shut me down.

While I don't agree with the idea of giving AI freebies out of the blue to keep the game challenging, I have a similar but different idea:

When an AI is clearly losing, they might have a priority shift, and assume a new decision making algorithm that dictates their behavior.  For instance, if they are slowly losing cities to you late game and it appears that they cannot gain allies to turn the tide, they have a good chance to switch to a desperate-times-call-for-desperate measures algorithm in which they might, say, move all of their units into one massive army, leave all but perhaps their capital defenseless, and book it toward your channeler/capital city in a risky move to seize victory from the jaws of defeat (think Battle of the Bulge).  If they are lucky enough to achieve this specific objective, it might improve the odds of other opponents (who were sitting on the fense or have poor diplomatic relations with you) being inspired to join with the cause against you.

Now, this kind of strategic shift doesn't have to come precisely in this flavor or occur every single time you are winning a war late game, but the general idea is that the AI makes a desperate move that has a chance for catastrophic success or catastrophic failure--- the chance of either being contingent on how deep of a mess the AI is in.

This would serve to remedy a few separate problems.  First, it will challenge the player at a time when they would normally be slowly and tediously steam rolling opponents in other strategy games.  Second, if the AI is unsuccessful in its all or nothing bid, it is much easier to inflict a decisive defeat upon it, thus avoiding the boring chain of time-consuming-guarenteed-victory-battles involved with defeating opponents (perhaps the remnants of the opponent's civilization will begin defecting over to you or offer an unconditional surrender once it has failed to reach its specific objective, with their remaining cities flipping over to you over the course of X number of turns.) 

This method doesn't require any cheating on the AI's part, but can still spice up the late game when victory looks like it is almost guarenteed.

Good points, but I'm not suggesting that the AI conduct a suicide attack against you every time you are about to win.  If they are fighting a war, have tried sueing for peace, and you are determined to obliterate them, it stands to reason they would try something desperate to prevent this rather than hunker down and allow you to meticulously gobble up their cities.  In a lot of strategy games, the AI prioritizes a mandatory amount of defense above everything else, and this priority should change if they are facing a greatly advantaged opponent on the verge of destroying them.

I think a victory path that relies heavily on victory should get the most grief from the AI, as it stands to reason that they believe that they "might be next."  This is where I would expect them to form broad alliances to prevent you from winning.  On the other hand, if you are casting a spell of heal-the-world-and-I-win then it doesn't make any sense that they would rush in to prevent this from occuring.