Hello. So I am enjoying the game, but since I find that I have to crank the difficulty setting up to hard or extreme before the AI really puts up a fight, I'd like to know precisely what kind of bonuses the AI gets at the higher settings. Usually in Stardock games it seems like normal difficulty corresponds to everything being equal between AI and human.

Initially I assumed it was a simple economic boost, and perhaps a research boost and stuff like that. But recently I encountered something I could not understand. My channeler had 15 intelligence, and controlled two air shards. From what I gather, that means that lightning bolt should have a damage roll of 3-45. However I was doing an average of ~10 damage agains critters with 0 defence. I reloaded several times, so I don't think I just got unlucky. So I am wondering if there is some behind-the-scenes stuff going on for the higher difficulty settings as well? Are the die-rolls no longer fair? Does controlling shards have lessened impact for the human player?

Basically a detailed breakdown of what gets affected by the settings would be very nice.

Edit: The too low damage seems to be a sepparate issue, as I can't seem to get shards to work at all: https://forums.elementalgame.com/392831