Yes, I was the one who made that post about the feeding the others income for a challenge. The thing is though that if you give the AI a whole lot of money in the beginning, they will most likely drive themselves bankrupt unless they IMMEDIATELY begin large scale conquests. I tried this in MTW once, and several factions that normally provided a challenge, like the Egyptians when I played the English, would actually field these massive armies, I mean just numbering in the thousands, and all of them compromised of the most fearsome peasants you ever did see...well, no, they just had a lot of weapon/armor upgrades...didnt help much

Hopefully the AI in RTW is a bit better, but I have noticed that they have a tendency to build the most of whatever happens to be the best unit they can get at the moment, for example Macedon produces absolute hordes of Light Lancers from Larissa because it has only a stable. So instead of producing a militia barracks at least and waiting to get some levy pikemen they just pump out horsemen in numbers the Huns would appreciate.