So far my elite soldiers dispatch easily those low ranked enemy ones, though they struggle with the enemy elite. But...
I thought that AI had only minor problems - it was before I played my first mission that involved sailing ships. So, this is how it all started...
After "conquering" a few nearby islands I decided to expand into land controled by enemy factions. So, I built a fortress but for some reason no troops came to occupy it. I wasn't sure what was going on, since in previous missions it was happening automaticly, but when I checked it turned out that I had no soldiers left. I made sure that I didn't turn recriutment off and I didn't, my armoury was working at full speed and I had some 200 kegs of beer in storage. The tricky part was that my armoury was on one island and my brewery on the mainland. AI can't recognize recruitment as a need and therefore put beer and swords and shields in the same warehouse. So I decided to build a brewery on that island and another armoury on the mainland, which solved the problem, but I had to wait of course for both productions to pick up.
What happened next was that the armoury (and iron smelting) on the island ran out of coal. Now I had around 170 units of coal in my HQ, but none in the harbour connected to it, so AI couldn't think of moving some of that coal to the harbour and then shipping it to the island that needed it. I did it manually (by setting 'Take out of store' for coal in HQ and 'Stop storing' in every other warehouse with land connections to HQ except for the harbour I needed). After what seemed painfully slow since the coal taken out of HQ was first used to fill every production that needed it (with land connections to the HQ) to the brim, harbour finally started getting some coal. But instead of shipping it to the island that needed it, it kept feeding those same productions with it
In the end it turned out that I had to set coal on 'Take out of store' on the island harbour (one near the armoury) that had no coal to start with, in order for my ships to bring coal there. I have no idea why it had to be that way when before the first harbour ran out of coal it was working normally - ships were bringing coal to the island automaticly.
It doesn't end there... My production of soldiers both on mainland and the island was steady again, but for some reason the number of soldiers coming to the latest fortress was still quite low. Then I figured out that no soldiers from the island were coming. Why? Well, I had two harbours on that island. Instead of sitting in one harbour and waiting for a ship to pick them up, they kept walking from one to the other, trying to catch up a ship or something. If only by an accident a ship would arrive at the harbour right on time it would pick up a soldier, but not necessarily - some ships just preferred to go around empty with no particular mission in mind. Setting one of the harbours to 'Stop storing' soldiers didn't help either - they kept walking to it and then walking back to the other. In the end I had to pull down the road between those two harbours so the soldiers would settle in one and wait for the ships.
And when I mentioned ships, they are something special. If you call an geologist or a scout to an island, they'll bring every single one they can grab there (instead of just one). Similarly, they brought all gold coins to the the harbour connected to the latest fortification (which is good), but when I build a simple guardhouse back on the mainland in order to be able to access some mining areas, they moved all those coins back, even though the guardhouse needed only 3 coins for its only soilder to reach elite status. And I even had a mint with land connections to that guardhouse.
Now back to soldiers - I know this is not exactly AI, but the script, but sometimes I have a fortress close to the border that is full of soldiers and during the time they all become elite. Now, due to some conquests, that particular fortress becomes redundant (it's not on border anymore so it doesn't need to be fully manned). Instead of those soldiers moving straight to the newly coquered fortifications, or to those that send their troops to conquer above mentioned fortifications, they move back to the nearest warehouse/harbour, while empty places get filled in by recruits. Not only those recruits are, well, innexperienced, but in this latest mission they were also coming from another island, which meant they needed time to get there. Because of that stupid algoritam, enemy managed to reconquer a couple of fortifiations
And for the end a honourable mention of enemy AI. They don't attack you unless you attack them (at this level, maybe they get more agressive later). That is fine - they're peaceful guys, but I build forts near the border and make their building burn down - they still don't consider it as an attack. I build a catapult and keep bombarding nearby barracks - they just keep dutifully reinforcing those barracks for every soldier I kill. Of course, stupid algoritam for catapult where helpers don't bring next stone until the first stone arrives (and therefore making your rate of fire depending on the proximity of the warehouse) gives them plenty of time to do that. But eventually they run out of soldiers and my catapult destroys the barracks - enemy still doesn't consider being under attack.
Then I finally attack their fortification and immediately they start retaliating. How? Usually by sending a ridiculously small number of troops against my strongest fortification in the area. Only those too far to reach it attack easier targets. So, I wait for a bit, kill their elite troops and if I had patience to wait longer I could probably kill them all, but I move in for a kill and capture their HQ too easlily, cause their own catapults were on the opposite side from it (close to the friendly border) and therfore useless to stop my expansion. Like you would think that all forts I built right next to their border would've given them some clue of my intentions
So, this is the end of my comments (ok, rants). I'll keep playing the game, only paying more attention not to depend too much on AI for moving goods/resources around and I hope there won't be a mission where I actually must have two harbours on the same land mass (and connected by roads). As for the enemy AI, well, I'll just exploit it