Sometimes allies do nothing, some farmers, some wood cutters, some miners, but nothing more, then the enemy AI can beat them with few soldiers, as the ally does not have any army.
It seems higher ai difficulty means weaker allies, and more cheating enemies. So allies are more and more useless as the ai difficulty set higher.
I noticed this as well. The AI will produce units but all they do is just run around their base. Seems like the latest patch made allied AI go all screwy.
Hello @FeedAardvark824,
AI allies are not designed to play weaker than enemies, though higher difficulty levels mean more early aggression which can mean that your allies get overrun more quickly. As a sidenote: The AI will never cheat on any difficulty level.
Do you have a recorded game file of this that you could send to mbeck@forgottenempires.net ? I will take a look at what the AI’s reasoning for its behavior was and make adjustments if appropriate.
Thank you for the feedback!
@FiveWind6951746 If you happen to have a recorded game of this as well please also feel free to send it to the mail address mentioned above, it would be much appreciated. 
Thanks!
-Promiskuitiv
in the last game where i’ve noticed it, there wasn’t early aggression, i was the slowest (10 min later than the second slowest) to reach imperial age, but my allies had a peaceful town, with farmers, wood cutters, etc, and just few military units standing next to the town center, while the enemy AI rushing with about 30 units.
In another game, i’ve seen that my ally make a lot of military units, but all stuck near the town center, and do nothing, even when the enemy is razing their buildings not far from there.
The AI on “team islands” map is totally bugged, not just my allies do nothing, but the enemies doesn’t do much either + constant CTD because of resource exhausition, when the game eats 9 gbytes of ram on that map.
Same issue here. Just did a 2v2v2v2 2 teamed humans, versus AI (HD) on hard difficulty. Only 1 civ age’d up, the rest of them stayed in dark the entire game.
one kinda fix there: save the game (new save, as overwrite barely works), quit from game, and reload it.
It makes sometimes “restart” the AI, so it will work better.
sometimes, after the allied AI was working correctly, just stops working, while of course the enemy AI is working, sending the onager, battering ram, monk, and skirmisher rushes.
Same here. Taunts don’t work for them either. Even on campaign where the yellow teutonic ally is supposed to attack under 31 but does nothing. Dozens of good units literarily standing around the castle and other buildings. Plus many other things where this AI has an entire map to maneuver but yet is constantly getting stuck, standing still 2 feet from an attacker, and taking the most annoying routes. I’ve been playing since late 90s and I don’t ever remember the ally AI as well as general AI being so screwy.
Thanks for the report, we will look into it, have a nice day 