How can Dominions be a single player game, when the AI can’t use 3/4 of the features that Illwinter put into the game? Sure balance is any issue, but I don’t want to leave over half the game unplayed because of it. You just ban certain nations, and hope your Diplomacy Game evens out the rest.
The AI doesn’t understand raiding, or thugging, just making giant armies that eventual starve to death. It won’t try to create an Undead army, to bait you with Poison Clouds. It won’t realize that water battles are won by the nation that can summon the most Water elementals (water battles in Dominions 5 are really boring these days). It won’t arm the most powerful recruitable Super Combatant correctly.
In MP games, you have to counter what other players throw at you, like T Strikes, large Communion enslavements, or something simple like Dryad Assassin, swarm, and Cloud spells.
Right now, sadly, the meta is dominated by buffing troops, but thankful, there are a fair number of balance mods that help.
There are a fair number of feature in the game that you just won’t use, or will be used against you in a Single Player Game, and these features and hidden mechanics aren’t explained in the manual.