Two issues at work here - one is there's some sort of resource bug going on, spawning too many resources in close proximity (see: https://forums.stardock.com/393225)
The other being that even though I was trying to avoid exploiting the AI this time (no tactical combat cheese, no custom sovereign), it still insisted on suiciding it's sovereign against my defenses. In one case, it attacked a stack inside a city I had just taken with JUST it's sov - resulting in instant death and dissolution of its empire.
There's also some serious issues with Conquest momentum going on here.
1) Conquering a 'higher difficulty' AI city is more valuable than founding your own city, because the AI has significant bonuses, so you get a fully developed city faster than you could have built yourself. Just a few of these results in a rapid snowball effect.
2) There's a bug that lets you build your own structures on TOP of existing structures in cities, I stopped building them once I noticed, but it needs to be fixed (ie, you get whatever structures are in the conquered city + more you can build on top, rather than preventing you from building 2x gold/research/etc structures)
3) Instantly gaining full Influence on a conquered city is very abusive. If there were some turns of resistance, possibly with an income drain instead of a bonus, this would at least slow down war mongering a little bit. As it is, I could capture a new city and instantly gain the resource boost.
4) Gold rewards for combat vs other AI nations should probably be removed entirely. Allowing me to capture a new city and instantly build more troops with the gold I build up is also abusive (this combines with point 3 to keep your momentum going).
5) The 'Legendary' equipment needs stiffer costs in the store - this is comparatively minor, but the 'magic' equipment requires Elementium for your troops, but only a piddly gold cost for your heroes, allowing you to outfit all heroes past the initial snowball period with full magical gear that is only trumped by armor at the very, very bottom of the Warfare tree (in comparison to just a few techs down the Magic tree)
6) Sand Golem tokens need to be removed from early loot piles. Minor, but important.
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Otherwise, the AI needs to be a) better about defending its cities and b ) more aggressive about capturing my undefended cities. Several times, I would eject my entire stack of doom from a freshly conquered city, and while there would be multiple hostile AI troops nearby, none would make a rush to recapture the city immediately for whatever reason.
Per this thread (https://forums.stardock.com/393267) I'd again strongly recommend that the Sovereign death=empire death mechanic be removed entirely and replaced with something else - banishment, dynastic succession, ransom, whatever.
