OK so I finally made some time to play a game of EL with the Tempest expansion again.

I was playing the Forgotten because I had never played them before and this is at normal difficulty.

The Good:

Maybe it was sheer luck but I had a pretty exciting game so far. Currently in turn 155 or so. I started near the Drakken and Ardent Mages. I sent my hero to spy on the Drakken early and started to steal their tech but they found me out and went on the war path (much to my surprise and delight). Drakken seem pretty picky about spies and pearls.  I managed to push them back but lost a city. Took me a while to get it back and finally eliminate them. 

Spent time spying on the Ardent Mages and Broken Lords. I was very pleasantly surpised to find that the Ardent Mages expanded and built themselves up. I usually find that they lag behind, but they were either first or second for a lot of the time. They also built Ateshi Zealots! That's awesome. No seriously, no Ardent Mage empire should leave those out. 

The Broken Lords also did well and expanded nicely. No second or third tier units from them yet though. 

Apart from seeing a Skyfin and meeting the Allayi that way, I'm not sure what the other races are. I did a random/unique game setup. 

The Forgotten are pretty fun so far. Not many complaints there. I like that the AI takes action when it detects a spy and does roundups and becomes hostile when it identifies where the spy came from.

The AI seems to be decent but there are a few quirks which I'll cover below.

The Bad (kinda):

I'll start by posting a couple screenshots.            

This seems to be both an AI thing but also a map generation problem. I did a normal world with 40 percent water and 2 continents. Continent shapes and spread were set to chaotic and no lakes. Not only did I get lakes/landlocked oceans, but the AI is obviously not able to tell that it is a bad idea to build ships in small oceans/lakes with nothing in them. 

Now this is also bad for the AI because it is spending time and resources on units it cannot use, but also it is using those units to calculate its might versus other empires. 

My concern remains that the AI might be easily duping itself into spending on aquatic activities when they would do better to focus on land-based activities.

I'm guessing that there is likely little chance for this to get looked at with all hands being on deck for ES 2 but I figured I'd post this anyway for future reference and to see if anyone else has been having similar experiences with this kind of map setup and the AI.

I'm including my savegame thus far. Forgotten - Turn 155.zip

All in all I think that Tempest is a decent expansion. Still a little concerned with some races not researching their second or third tier units when they are gearing up for war though. My previous game as Morgawr saw a Wild Walker AI sending in armies of 5 rangers and one drider. 

Note that I may have messed up posting the screenshots. Open them in a new tab to get the full size if they don't display properly.