The AI

[SIGGE]

It seems that if I play a campaign with normal difficulty, noone does anything to me ever, and all the AI can do during war is to raid my villages with 2 units. Then if I set it on "hard" suddenly everyone attacks me and I have no room to do anything but try to defend my cities while I get no money from anywhere thanks to noone wanting to trade with me and my few trade routs being raided by everyone. is it too much asked to make a balanced game?

[Krauser]

Apparently, it is too much to ask because game AI has not really gotten much better in 20+ years. I'm not sure if it's too hard to program or too much processing for a computer to do, but no company has been able to create good AI. You can up the difficulty a little bit by choosing a nation with a harder starting area. For instance, France would be one of the harder locations with potential enemies on many sides and the need for both naval and land armies whereas Maratha would be an easier location with only one real enemy to fight and not much need for a navy to complete the victory objectives.

[Peasant Phill]

You can also install mods. I have had good results with darkmod not to easy but also believable.