Part of the problem, as I understand it, is that the AI has difficulty dealing with the complex campaign map. Now I haven't played STW2 as of yet, so I can't speak to recent developments. I do know that in the original RTW, something as simple as a counting algorithm was sorely needed to meet AI-led factions needs. It was so sad to see the AI creating huge naval fleets for a particular faction when that faction's cities were falling one-by-one for lack of ground troops.

The battlefield AI has also left much to be desired but I'm sure it's not an easy thing to program an AI to understand how to use all the myriad of troop types now available in TW games. In that respect, no AI will ever be able to compete with MP gaming......at least not yet