I started a one of several games on Hard difficulty and to my surprise, this game was relatively unusual in a way, Empires was basically winning on all fronts instead of Kingdoms as usual. Out of all kingdoms that started, only Me and Pariden still stand.

Don't let the war signs on the score board scare you, Magnar, Umber and Resoln has never thrown troops at me for the whole war, only Yithril is fighting me while other three empires is just sitting on their butts doing nothing for me to get that far I had to use Birth of summer three times and raze lots of yithril cities/outposts. Until I reached this area and just chilled there for basically a long while as I built more armies to defend against all fronts cuz I think I will get assaulted everywhere but no?

Then I noticed one bad usual habit of Yithril, He's very fond of doing stuff like this. He loves to send dozens of tiny but strong units.

An army of Juggernaut and Warg rider. I tried to see if he was also dispatching other armies at same time.. nope, just it alone by it's lonesome so I decided to get funny because I didn't feel like having my army get wounded for nothing so I dispatched just myself.

With rather predictable results. I used the cavalry's ability to hit and run to bring the juggernaut to it's knees. Basically the battle went like this, I cast haste on myself then blind darkness from darkling's cloak and proceeded to assault and run away as needed to heal with warg rider only able to give pursue.

And Yithril kept on doing it again and again while never learning to learn that it's pointless endeavor other than keeping my mana pool from getting too high for me to start casting apocalyptic spells. Its almost like it doesn't know it needs to bring lots of armies if he wants the Ward of Zanber burnt down to the ground.

And Ericridge ie just a humble commander. <.< Not a nasty assassin or anything.

And then I found out why Yithril is so defensive against me despite hating my guts and dowing me for like 4th time before I decided to stay in eternal war against yithril. Its because they're fighting other empires at same time, I managed to witness their troops fighting Resolyn and Umber troops, although I don't know about Magnar yet. Maybe i should check diplomatic screen abit more.

So they're at war against lots of factions and they're constantly suiciding troops for no gain on Ward of Zanber. 

And another thing, AI goes berserk when you use Confusion on them....

Watch trolls be trolls and break 1upt rule blatantly and in front of my eyes.

When I cast confusion, they immediately ran to a single tile and sat there denying me the confusion debuff on trolls which will make them hit each other instead of my spearmen. I was like.. ok. And circled them rather fast.

To sum it up,

Hard difficulty doesn't feel so hard.