Ahh yes, the hardcore crowd (no pun intended) raves && cheers && is excited about guardians and what not, the casual aiwars gamer like me is certainly not excited. I get my (sweet) a** handed on a platter everytime by mk2 starships runnning rampant in my HW at 3:30....bummer: that's on 'very easy'..
I hope arcen games knows the needs of a 'typical strategy gamer'. 90% of all Civ4 gamers *don't* play the game on diety. Yes, I know, things will get sorted out, nevertheless, I think the feedback from the forum might be a bit misleading, cause it comes from a small group of dedicated pros who always want 'more challence', but that leaves the average gamer in the cold.
Cmon, flame me, go play pacman 
, seriously, the ever increasing challence was the reason I bailed out of aiwars for the first time && I know I'm not alone. Quite some friends ditched the game when things like CPA made an apperance.
Anyway, my .2€, have a nice sunday....pia
It sounds like you probably ran afoul of a glitch, not an intended situation, in that game. Chris did just tell you the present game balance is a bit of a mess, and the beta still has some bugs (obviously, or it wouldn't be a beta), so I don't think you should take your experiences with the current build at low difficulty all that seriously.
That said, if you quit because of CPA's, perhaps you need to rethink your strategies. That's supposed to be the fun of all this, you know, looking at new situations and coming up with new ways to deal with them. If the game remains static, and the same tactics always work, what's the point in continuing to play?
I'm a fairly middle-of-the-road strategy gamer, certainly a long way from being "hardcore." I play Civ 4 on Noble (or even Warlord if I'm warming up), but as of the 3.189 release AI War on difficulty 7 was an absolute pushover. With the ship numbers reduced and the emphasis on static defenses, the game got distinctly easier in the later SlimDX betas. This is just a correction back towards the original (much lauded) difficulty of the game. This game is all about hard choices, without some teeth to make those choices meaningful what's the point in playing it? Guardians and the like are new tools to make the game strategically interesting, that's a phenomenally
good thing and something for everyone to be excited about, regardless of their preferred difficulty. When all's balanced properly very easy will still be very easy, but it should be a much more interesting "very easy" for the inclusion of these new elements. Difficulty 7 will hopefully be more like Difficulty 7 was back in July, thanks to the AI having new options. Everybody wins.
