I guess it’s no secret that a good chunk of players within the AoE series just loves to play casually vs the AI, whether with friends or in Single Player and imo, AoE 4’s AI lacks in this department.
In past AoE games, the AI had a lot of personality attached to it. This was achieved through various ways, e.g. naming the AI after historic leaders of the faction it was playing. It also had multiple possible names available as you can see in the example screenshot from AoE 1 below where all AI opponents were playing as Egyptians:
AoE 2 then allowed the AI to resign, so you didn’t had to hunt it down vill by vill. It also added a selection of “exuses” on why it resigned:
AoM itself didn’t change much from AoE 1 and 2 with the exception that instead of leaders, the AI was named after cities related to the civ it was playing (e.g. Norse could play as “Oslo”.)
AoE 3 took the AI to another level when all civs got a person that represented it: Napoleon (French), Elizabeth I. (British), Cuauhtemoc (Aztecs) etc. The AI now also actively trashtalks you and reacts to certain stuff that happens in the game, e.g. when it destroys one of your Trade Posts or when you collect a lot of treasures early in the game. Imo that’s the best AI in the series when it comes to interaction.
Now, the problem with AoE 4’s AI is that it’s missing the stuff from the other AIs as it’s just named like “AI - Easy” and on top doesn’t know when to resign, so if you’re playing with Standard Victory, you have to fulfill one of the three win conditions and not hope that the AI will resign earlier when you’re clearly playing better than it.