Yes Sombre. We all know that you can kick the games tail.
I admit that the AI is not a great AI vs expert players, and I am sure that you remember many games where you excelled.
But running a hundred games on repeated hosting tends to show patterns. The score sheets tend to show early leads by nations such as Ermor, mid leads by nations such as Oceania, and late leads by nations such as Arcos. The patterns are even more pronounced if you remove the randominity of the AIs early setup giving it pre-created gods and scales. But then of course removing those variables tends to also remove some great surprises.
Examining the debug logs shows definite differences in the way they handle their daily affairs. Much improvment has come in the last dozen or so patches over the old linear single-minded AI code I used to complain about which had them all making the same decisions. As a modder you might also have noticed the many commands added for telling a nation to act in certain ways (such as, to act as a blood-sacrifice needing nation).