the game is unbalanced and broken with total war

[alexman91]

every game now between turn 10-20 entire map goes into world war. every major invade all minors and declare war on me.
i dont have the game setting for violence.
majors are way to weighted to go into war with you.
its also way to broken early game as ai cheats u can never field any soldiers due to no metal
ai just builds roads through mountains shit out tanks while u are starved.
majors seem to consolidate into owning the entire map on regular before turn 30

[Slippy]

every game now between turn 10-20 entire map goes into world war. every major invade all minors and declare war on me.

You should share your save files, that sounds really fun to be struggling really on!

majors are way to weighted to go into war with you.

I dont believe they are but even so, Shadow Empire is a war game and you should expect to have to fight every regime on the planet. Personally I dont like having friendly regimes in my game, I prefer knowing that I am going to have to fight/beat every single major regime on the planet.

its also way to broken early game as ai cheats u can never field any soldiers due to no metal

Not true. The AI doesnt generate resources out of thin air. If it is producing lots of troops early on it probably has found a metal mine. Early on yes, you will be constrained by resources and you have to be very careful about what you build. It is very possible to deploy an OHQ of infantry within the opening 5-10 turns of the game. Alternatively if you are struggling - pick the settings to start with an army as well as militia.

ai just builds roads through mountains shit out tanks while u are starved.
majors seem to consolidate into owning the entire map on regular before turn 30

The AI does get unlimited IP for road construction and if you have from other 4x games it feels very unfair that the AI can gobble up a lot of the map. I do somewhat agree with you (I wish there was a limit or something that stops them building tons of roads through mountains) but you have to remember 1) the AI requires these advantages to challenge a human player 2) we have some advantages over the AI both from our brains (planning ahead) and playing stratagem cards and 3) a lot of land in Shadow Empire is not really worth holding. A smaller area is easier to defend. Yes you want to hold hex perks, free folk settlements etc but a lot of the planet will be dead land with no real reason to hold.

If you are struggling drop the difficulty back, change the history classes, start with more military or just take a break and come back with a level head to try again.

[Xxzard]

My observations relevant to your comments:

For reference I usually play on difficulty level hard, tech level 3 (lowest), militia only city state start.

It isn't unusual for hostile (especially militaristic) majors to declare war in the round 10-30 timeframe. There are ways to avoid it, but sometimes it's just about unavoidable. I wouldn't say it's instantly a total war though. The AI is often quite reluctant to attack in force and it may be more like a border skirmish. It is true however, at least in my experience, that there is usually no way to return to peace against a warlike major opponent. I think this could be improved.

I wouldn't say hostile neighbors happens every game. Sometimes you have friendly neighbors or majors who just want to extract credits from you for good relations. I'm not sure which factors influence the likelihood of different types of majors being generated, beyond the severe violence tag. Maybe someone else can provide better information there.

Metal availability can certainly be a challenge. On higher difficulties you don't have guaranteed metal deposits while the AI does. In this case about the best you can do is build recycling facilities and try to build industry about round 15 or so. If the AI has metal deposits and you don't, you'll almost certainly be behind on the industry building track, and this can have a lasting effect on your military and economic buildup vs. AI. Now all that being said, my experience has been that it is possible to defend even with that disadvantage. Infantry don't cost much metal (usually you'll run out of population first), AT doesn't cost too much, and even a few light tank battalions are generally feasible if you have at least 2 scav locations. You may have to stick to defensive terrain or chokepoints. In my experience, rounds 20-50 are the most difficult time if you're behind the AI like this, but I can usually make a comeback by focusing on research and troop quality. Also the AI is still not tactically amazing so there are tactical tricks to beat it up a bit. The AI seems to get the early research techs really fast, then slows down as they don't invest into BP production buildings as much.

The AI builds dirt roads for free as documented in the manual. I agree it feels a bit crazy they can build through high mountains in the early game. It's annoying when they use this ability to flank you through some inaccessible terrain you just can't possibly get supply into in the early game.

AI majors are generally quite aggressive about absorbing neighboring minors, either diplomatically or militarily. I've tested this, and it is possible to do similar timings as a human player, but the AI is certainly very efficient and has slightly different rules compared to the player which likely gives it an advantage.

So overall, I think it needs to be borne in mind that this can be a challenging game and it greatly depends on luck and your selected difficulty level how well equipped you will be versus the AI. I appreciate that because I like luck of the draw and the randomized experience it provides. Sometimes I lose or give up against the AI on hard. If it bothers me too much I'll switch to Normal or Easy. As much as it's a cliche, my advice is to switch to an easier difficulty level. Or, if you would like to discuss strategy and tactics, there's some good minds on here and I'm sure folks would be happy to talk about it.

[Uemon]

In my experience wars with all AIs are basically inevitable. Even those that start off as being neutral or downright friendly toward you, will, over time, deterriorate toward being hostile/attacking you, as soon as you get a land border with them.

But as someone said, this is a game about total war planetary domination. This is to be expected.

Now, the question is can you survive/beat the AI?

And the answer is yes.

There are several basic strategies.

One of them is to focus on capturing minor towns as soon as you can. Every minor you take will add more IP per turn which will allow you to build industry buildings easier and start snowball effect from IP capacity. Once you are able to outproduce the AI, its all over basically.

Another strategy is to focus on developing your starting province instead of rasing huge armies quickly. This will also lead you toward IP snowballing but also research snowballing. Once you have a substantial advantage over AI, they have no chance.

Really the main issue when youre a new player is figuring out ways to deal with AI tanks. AI is very good at fielding lots of (not great) light tanks very quickly. And they are deadly if you have an infantry only army. So you need to find a way around this. Mine is self propelled guns with high velocity cannons, and then you mix those with infantry and AI is pretty much dead. But in order to do so you need fuel. So figure out how they fuel fast and from that point on its all fairly simple.