Strange. I've never noticed any difference between AI ship sailing capability and mine, at least at normal difficulty. Since hard/very-hard gives the AI cheats, it wouldn't surprise me if the naval side had some cheats too (like sailing against the wind). Are you sure you aren't playing at hard/very-hard tactical difficulty?

I verified these cheats in the land-side. Swordsmen vs swordsmen (same type, I forget which), level field, each side having 1 unit. Only on Normal did my side *ever* win. It was more dramatic with line infantry. I set up british infantry vs british infantry, 1 unit each. On hard and above, the AI would consistently finish reloading before I did, up to a few seconds on hard. Only on normal did the AI finish reloading at the same time as me.

CA used to make their Empire games w/o cheats in the tactical game up to at least Hard (don't remember if RTW's AI got cheats at VH in battle). The idea was that the AI's battle tactics would improve. Apparently there's new management at CA, because now they cheat again. I *really* hope that Normal battle difficulty gives us the full-blown tactical AI, because I *hate* cheating AI, and it would be sad that in order to get the better tactical AI, I have to accept cheats too.