DIY* :)
http://www.gog.com/forum/eador_series/moddingindexes
go to guard.var

find
/61 Name: Monsters;
Unit1: 32, 10, 3
Unit2: 33, 10, 3
Unit3: 68, 10, 3
Unit4: 52, 8, 3;

68 slug
52 manticore
32 basilisk
33 spider

If you replace this block with

Unit1: 32, 10, 2
Unit2: 33, 10, 2
Unit3: 68, 10, 2
Unit4: 52, 8, 2;

you will get -1 to each monster.

*do it yourself

Figured as much. I've pretty much wondered from the start how AI managed it's expenses with it's crappy economy. It just became more and more obvious as game progressed. Anyone know if there's a way to mod these variables?

I can already foresee further problems as AI gains access to even stronger guards especially as I don't see any shards giving better guards in my current playthru so only way to defend is using forts.
I much rather removed AI upkeep cheat. Any way to do that?

Also is there a way to change astral energy cost of shard adantages and/or change what you can get (I'd like to remove all the rubish lowest guality items from table). As it stands, only things I've used so far are the 10% cheaper resources.

The AI is probably designed to rely on not having to pay guard upkeep. Even if you could change that, it would just bankrupt itself all the time. We'll just have to live with it as it is...

Anyone know if they've removed any of the cheats in the remake or improved AI in general? I highly doubt I buy it if not (well, maybe 80% off).

Dont worry, as you progress the guards become less and less of a problem, the monsters guard are already among the strongest unlimited guards you can build. Even a level 20 mage with level 2 spells should have no problem dealing with them. Its get very easy later with the higher spell schools.

Perhaps, won't reduce the annoyance factor thought which increases as shards grow larger (was freaking anoying destroying 40 of those guards). Also lack of good guards to hold the lines means I'll have to build forts everywhere to keep hold of my conquests.

Defeating them in 20 secs sure reduces the annoyance factor for me. And yes, forts are a good way to defend.

Gurads overall are the worst aspect of this game, IMO. As was already mentioned, they are often more powerful than enemy hero and you have to spend a lot of time grinding to get to enemy stronghold.
And enemy usually uses the same guards in most provinces, so during exploring you fight various enemies, enemy heroes are varied in fight as well, but when you get to fight gurads it's exactly the same enemy over and over again, so sometimes you fight even 20 same combat in row. It's annoying with some strong guards and it's very boring with weaker enemies who don't flee.

There are ways to defeat them with Scout and Warrior,too. They have been posted. Monster guards only pop up at late turns, so the way to avoid them would in fact be a "quick win".
Petrify should really be no problem, since it has a low resistance check. The AI is not smart enough to use spiders web effectively, this is a very powerful tool only for you to defeat Dragons or Cult of the Phoenix/Dragon. These things are hardly worth abandoning the whole game for.
But I know where you are coming from, as I said before I used to have much trouble with them, but now I learned to deal with it and they are nothing special anymore. The better you learn to play the game, the earlier you are ready to attack the AI, and the earlier you attack, the easier it is to defeat its guards.

The other problem with constantly fighting them is you really can't trust the computer so you can't use Quick Combat resolution.

I just really really hate how the computer uses it's units up so stupidly quite often. Like with his Swordies/Dwarfs he constantly initiates the attacks on my swordies when they are the stronger for it. Instead of hanging back with certain units the computer is just going full out on the attack and throwing their guys away.

* The only real exception to the quick combat is if you have a solo warrior. Although you can't use it all the time vs certain units it does get to the point where you can just auto res 75% of his battles. More if you have things like Basilisk or Dragon sets.

Yes I know I can defeat them with the warrior/scout as well and I have done so in the past but a wizard at level 20 with some not that rare spells can easily do it but a warrior / scout at level 20 will have a lot more problems doing it especially without losing every single unit.

Also It's difficult to defeat the AI quick enough, I have seen monster guards very early from some of the masters and at that point all you can do is grind, grind and grind some more and that is certainly not an enjoyable aspect of the game

The whole problem is that guards overall are way tougher than the enemies heroes, it shouldn't be that way and weirdly enough the AI can always walk all over my best guards ( don't have monster guards yet so best one is patrolmen). Also the fact that the AI get guaranteed good alliances ( almost always with centaurs) within the 20 first turns is also ridiculous because it gives them strong and cheap guards early on.

The battlefield would have to be at least a little bigger for this to work, but I'd like to see all the units in a province stack for battles. For example, if there's an enemy province with guards and a hero in it, and you attack it from three different directions with three different heroes, all the units merge together and fight one huge battle. It would be more fun and speed up the game a bit. You could even make the battlefield scale depending on how many units are involved, so the standard size would be replaced with a larger size for bigger battles.

Resistance is the key to defeating petrify. If you get it high enough, petrify doesn't even work on the hero.

Actually I find that for the "Good" guards the best first tier is Guardsmen(6/4 Swordies/Crossbow), which requires Swordsmen/Crossbowmen and Stonemason Guild, as opposed to the Patrollmen (6/3/2 Pikes/Archers/Swordies) which requires Pikemen and Armory. Upkeep wise the Guardsmen cost 1 more gold but they reduce unrest by 3 instead of Pikes which only reduce by 2. Although sadly it takes longer to get them especially if you do not find wood and ore early.

This stops being a big issue as you get better at the game. But, if you consider leveling up the heroes and building up your empire a grind then maybe they game is not right for you, I like that aspect of the game very much.