Just an observation, this.

In my current HRE/Early/GA/Hard campaign, I can't help noticing how badly some of the AI factions are doing at achieving some relatively simple GA goals, like holding onto their homelands. Last time I looked, the Byzantines had lost every single one of theirs and stand to score only about 5 points when the next tally comes (1204), from their conquests. They have the Novgorod backed into a tight corner (just Finland) but have themselves been pushed into Europe so that they border with me and now the Turks have arrived in Hungary, facing one of my borders.

Factions will decline offers of my princesses and may have died out, for want of heirs, as a consequence, zeroing their points completely. I can't get my princes married off either but the HRE has the get-out clause of electing new leaders anyway and that's less of a problem for me.

Basically, the AI control seems to be running other factions as if they're still aiming for total conquest. I don't get it. Anyone else with observations similar, or different, to this?