I'd advise testing the AI on different difficulty levels. The easiest game I had against the AI was against all impossibles, about default settings. I personally defeated 2 ai players by turn 20, which is unheard of by me on even normal difficulty. Admittedly jotunheim with a blade wind casting pretender didn't hurt...but even so. [/quote]
That is part of the problem. Telling the AI to build armies a certain way only works best for certain settings. The AI now seems to do best when the game is set at independents 5 or 6. I usually set it at 7. The AI then seems to properly seek expansion with mass troops, then builds decent armies when it can afford to, then work on magic.
Indeps set at 3 (the default) tends to create a "rush game" but the AI set on difficult makes it think its in for a long hard game. The harder AIs definetly perform better in harder games.
I havent tested it but Im rather curious if the easy AI might not actually do better in a low indep game than the hard AI does.