Something seems wrong with latest playthrough

[troche58]

Started game in Normal difficulty and was going smoothly until I ran into an NPC faction that early on (like about turn 30) sent out a Hero and some level 1 fighters that were near invincible. In the battle odds I had at least 2:1 advantage and yet would get wiped out barely inflicting any damage. When I played manual battle I found out why. And this seems crazy OP for a NPC this early in game:
* They had access to Lvl 4 "Grand Protection" spell and could cast it at least 3 times in the battle before I could kill the leader. Their level 1 units had:

• Bolstered Def x 5 (8 defense total)
• Bolstered Res x 5 (8 total)
• Grace x 2
• Regen x 2

That's insane! Even after attacking a single Level1 unit 5 times and they had weakened and diseased ...next turn they were back to near full strength. I'm talking about just one level1 fighter.

I have no problem fighting the other AI Players but this one NPC faction near my border just wipes me out.

Is this just an anomaly and I need to start over or is there something I'm missing

 

[Blanch Warren]

thanks, will try industrious again.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Are they part of a presence trait? Some realms will roll a presence trait that puts factions on the map that come with a starting advantage.

 

[I_am_Nemo]

I've seen high tier free cities show up with some pretty high tier spells, so I'm guessing that's what happened here? Seems like just bad luck, if so.