[Sombre]

No I played with Hinnom on a No Indies map and they still got tooled by the other AIs.

I think the best AI nation barring UW or LA Ermor is EA Ulm. It seems to do well every time.

In terms of balancing, you can't worry too much about SP and the AI, because the AI doesn't use the nations as they are supposed to be used anyway. Despite them having awesome PD and a strong starting force, the sort of things the AI can use well, they still don't do great. I don't really understand why though.