Buying the AI side yourself and allowing the AI to do the deployment is something I have been recommending to people for years and having a friend set up the AI side is almost as old as SP itself
Consider this dilemma
If we set up the picklists to allow the AI to buy, for example, a slightly more mechanized force, maybe toss in a Mech platoon on the first AI purchase go around and set it up so that it will be picked up in the first 1500 points this makes people happy who want to play on a small map and all the people who think they are facing "hordes" of infantry because using the 1990 example and looking at the German force for that year a Pz Gren platoon is going to cost somewhere around the same price as a Jaeger Company. ( "That's too much !!" I can hear the cries now........
) and that cuts down on the number of units a human player has to face.
However, take that same number of points and increase the frontage and work on a 50 x 50 map instead of a 30 x 50 map and now the AI's trying to cover double the ground with less leg infantry and then somebody plays the game and complains about the "lame" AI and how easy it was to win.
No matter what we do, someone ends up unhappy. All we can do is provide the options to work around whatever shortcoming each individual gamers thinks exists in the game and choosing the force you want to fight is one of the oldest and easiest to do and if you set up three or four of them in advance then pick one at random you'll likely forget exactly what you picked for the AI anyway unless you always pick the same thing
Don