Re: Is AI cheating ?
From my experience, the AI does not cheat. I have not caught it cheating yet playing on the difficult AI setting.
I find that the AI is somewhat predictable, and moderately sensible in the strategic play. It will not enter a province with a defending army that _appears_ to be superior to the invading army. It will almost always attack undefended provinces, making no assumptions about where the enemy armies move on the same turn (ie., it will not try to guess where your huge army in the neighbouring province will move, if anywhere, so you can usually catch the AI by shifting your army from the province it is in (seemingly heavily defended but actually undefended because the army moves out on the same turn attackers move in) to the seemingly undefended territory (which is actually heavily defended _if_ you move your army here, where it will arrive before the invading army).
As someone else wisely posted in another thread about how to defend borders: don't. Go and lay siege to his fortifications. He will be denied ressources to recruit more troops, and he will try to break the siege, regardless of his odds. Unless you are Ermor, this will probably require good supplies, so nature mages and nature magic items will help greatly. Also keep in mind that his dominion will probably be strong where he has fortifications,.. ah well, I digress.
Regarding using stealthed troops. I don't have sufficient experience with this to really offer some good comments, but examing the actual stealth ability of the units in question. I think there is a big difference between using units with stealth (+0) and stealth (+30). As long as you don't get caught, you shouldn't have to worry about armies that show up. Using some individual scout characters or scrying magic to scout ahead of a stealthy army should work well.
/Rainbow
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