I'm trying to decide whether to buy Hearts of Stone and Blood & Wine or not, because while I thought the base game's story was wonderfully written for the most part, I thought too many enemies were rather easy to exploit (even on Death March with enemy scaling turned on). My issue wasn't with the combat mechanics, which were acceptable, but rather with how there were too many situations where enemies just flat-out couldn't fight back or weren't smart enough to know how to really make my work harder. My question is, are the enemies in the expansions smarter and less vulnerable to the same tricks (Axii, for an example) that got me through most of the base game, or could I just keep using the same strategies over and over most of the time? Thank you for your time!

A computer 'enemy' does not know about human devised 'tricks'. If you find such tactics too easy, then change; don't use them.

I just played the expansions and don't feel it's more difficult at all, pretty much the same as base game. I was using level 17 gear until level 45 or something then I decided I needed to upgrade. I liked the expansions better than the base game for the story.

Thanks very much! That was really helpful.