There is a way to switch factions while playing the MTW game in the middle of a campaign (using -ian option). If you do this, you'll see that the AI is absolutely idiotic in terms of how it runs its economy. In the case of Danes, a few years into the campaign they are mostly deep into the red unable to build anything... The same handicap applies to building economic trade networks: I tried building up an almo empire and leave it for the AI to handle about 50 years into the campaing. Before I turend almos over to the AI, they had a well developed trade network uninterrupted trade chain of ships going all over the mediterranean and larger fleets guarding access to the main ports. In a few turns of AI "management" the trade network was destroyed, all ships gathered into a few unprofitable stacks somewhere far away from home ports and... their sultan was stuck in portless ireland with the closest ship stack being a few sea regions away... on top of that, AI almos had managed to let Italian and English crusaders into their mainlans in the Iberian peninsula (i had left it all under Almo control, having huge armies in the choke-point provinces of Navarra and Aragon, fleets guarding all sea-access provinces... needless to add, the empire had gone from running a nice cash surplus into being completely in the red... :(