I am now playing just with the 700% increase in enemies with experience increase standard to the impossible difficulty and at the moment it is satisfying me perfectly.
As far as bugs are concerned I haven't knowingly come across any yet (just about to get off the first island).
Thanks for the suggestion about 'no loss' but I am loving trying to do as much damaged before my army gets butchered. This means I am having to use different units and be careful about running out of gold.
They may well be some bugs but apart from the Gal Civ series I have never come across such deeply amusing writing. I look forward to doing the silly quests just to see what mad text I will end up reading next
.