I spent around 80 hours testing the game out on the four main difficulties while researching the guide, with around 50 hours of that time on hard or above. Plus the many hours spent playing for enjoyment. I became very familiar with how the battle and campaign AI behaves on the various levels, and what kind of things provoke what result. There are lots of little rules which together add up into a semblance of logic, rules which are applied consistently across the board wherever an applicable situation arises. These little rules are a core part of what makes the AI work. Many of them were broken in my RotS experience. If I gave the sengoku AI an army with a similar infantry/archer composition to the ones I faced in RotS I know it would try to shoot me, that it would attempt to flank on at least one side, and that I may end up having to go after it instead of having it come to me. If I gave it a similar army which outnumbered me by more than 600 men I know I'd be swamped from all sides. If I added a few superior melee units in that mix I know I would see them thrown against the weakest part of my line. There would also be a decent chance it would have hidden units in the available forests in most of my RotS battles. If a distant clan declares war on me in the sengoku game I know to expect a naval invasion within 4 turns, probably less. If I leave a castle exposed and a hostile AI is nearby it cannot resist attacking it. And so on through scores of examples. It's an old, respected friend.

I haven't found any difficulty controlling my allies when playing on hard or very hard. I've had clans stick with me for an entire campaign, through realm divide and beyond. This is the first game in the series where diplomacy actually works.

GalCiv2, now there's a game! Not one of my top favourites any more, but definitely up there. That's primarily due to the AI. Yes, I too dislike cheating AI. Civilisation's higher difficulties disgust me because it's nothing but a pile of cheats piled on top of the normal level AI. The cheating in prior TW games used to annoy me; S2's toned it down quite a bit.

Steam just finished validating my install. It downloaded a 23MB file so fingers crossed I will now see an improvement. Time to try it out ...