do the game balance change with the new patch?

[normalphil]

wailoktam said:
I have got bored with the lack of challenge after mid game when you can produce SCs like a factory (wraith lord + latern shield + area damage sword + horror helmet + regen ring) I wonder whether it is worth playing again with the new patch installed. Do the AI become better at dealing with SCs? (They did get fire arrows when they can produce some well-balanced army when they got huge in the past. But once you beat them down to around the size of you. They rarely produce an army with artiliery + mages that can cast fire arrow)

Something I did to revitalize my game was including a slew of non-vanilla mods for AI nations (recently helped by the fact that the modding comunity has been throwing out a lot of mods). And while I haven't seen the AI go in for fire-arrow spam, something I have seen it do is ubiquitous arrow-fend spam, when it has the paths to pull it off.