They new retorts, spells, and units are a treat, but the AI is frustrating beyond belief. Enemy wizards push aggressively outward, creating cities on literally every available square. Diplomacy, while possible, is undercut by the fact that your allies are literally knocking on your door--so every wizard pact falls apart when you move your own troops around your own cities. If you enjoyed exploring caves and lairs and whatnot, too bad. Apart from the few around your initial capital, the AI is going to grab all the good ones leaving only late-game ones available. The battle AI is nonsense. Even on lower levels, flying units won't attack. They'll just hover there, immune to all your lower-tier units. Build some flying units or archers? Too bad, the enemies will target them first, then continue to hover out of reach. Worse, AI units will actively run away from your troops. This is irritating when you have to march your missile units across the board to finally shoot down an annoying group of zombies, but it becomes even worse if you've lost your missile/fast units. I literally chased a single skeleton around a board for twenty minutes. Sure, its "smarter" for the enemies to prolong battles inevitably. But from a gameplay perspective, it's just aggravating and very much not fun. I suppose players who like to play VERY aggressively would enjoy this mod (which is why I'm giving it two starts), but for me it's a frustrating experience even on the easiest settings. Not because I lose, but because I don't get to do any of the things I like (exploration and focusing on a few cities) before the AI is literally crawling through my lands with hordes of sprites and war bears. If I could just turn the AI back to the original (for all its faults), I would give this mod five stars.
