This section is dedicated to accumulating wisdom on ways to make Warlords as challenging as possible when playing against the computer. (The best challenge is to play against a good human, but such games take time.) The settings described below are arranged roughly in order of increasing subtlety in determining difficulty.

AI Settings

Obviously warlords are the hardest, nastiest AI players. Random characters tend to be less predictable and a bit more aggressive.

"I am the Greatest" - Diplomacy Off or Hidden Map on

Enabling this option converts the computer players to warlords and configures the other game settings for nearly maximum difficulty. With diplomacy off or hidden map on, however, the AI players will not gang up on you after 6 turns or so.

"I am the Greatest" - Diplomacy On, Hidden Map Off

This is just like the I am the Greatest setting above, but with Diplomacy On and Hidden Map off, all the AI players will gang up and attack you with everything they can spare starting at around turn 6-8. You have to expand quickly, build some powerful defensive stacks, and then trap the invaders in key strategic bottlenecks and defeat them with very good kill ratios to win. Most of the settings discussed below assume that this option is enabled.

Enhance the Enemy

After starting the game, on your first turn, go into the "Game" Menu, choose "Game Settings", and then click "Enhanced" for all the AI players, but not the human players. Enhancement increases by +2 the permanent base strength of all units produced while it is enabled, but not units produced before it is enabled or units produced after it is turned off. Note that this is independent of medals, temple blessings, or other permanent strength enhancements, and like them it is independent of hero, stack, and terrain bonuses. Since a +2 strength advantage generally gives a unit a 60-70% chance of victory instead of a 50% chance, this makes the AI units much harder to kill, and tends to balance out the fact that humans are better at putting together stacks with large bonuses.

Leave Hidden Map Off

The AI is not very good at exploring, so humans gain an advantage in hidden-map games, especially if you keep the AI's scouts from seeing your home cities.

Turn off View Production, View Enemies, and Military Advisor

These features generally help you out, so turn them off.

Turn Intense Combat On

Intense combat tends to equalize the strength of units, and reduces the advantage gained by well-assembled stacks with high bonuses. In combination with I am the Greatest, where you must stop wave after wave of attacks by the AI players, the Intense Combat option increases the challenge by making it difficult to kill enough AI units without losing all your own stacks.

Turn Quick Start On

A good human player expands far more rapidly into unoccupied territory than the AI does, and therefore humans can achive a quick advantage by taking more cities early on. The Quick Start option makes this much more difficult by distributing all of the cities evenly among players, and forcing humans to attack defended AI cities rather than neutral cities in order to expand.

Alternatively, consider making neutral cities Average

AI players tend to get their heroes and allies killed early on while trying to capture defended neutral cities. Making the neutrals only average makes it easier for you to take cities, but it also makes it easier for the AI to do so, which allows them to expand much more rapidly and without losing heroes early on. I think the net result is to give the AI a better shot at winning, especially if AI players are enhanced.

Disable city razing

This is another feature which humans are more adept at using than AI players, so turning it off hurts you more than it hurts them.

Turn on Random Turns!

It's a lot more difficult to plan strategy when some AI players will get two moves in between your moves! Of course, you also get two moves in a row sometimes, but since the AI doesn't generally plan its defenses based on when your armies will arrive, Random Turns confuses them less than it confuses you.