The AI absolutely sucks at every difficulty. It seems like the primary issue with the AI is they retreat at the smallest push back from a player, and not just a normal retreat, they retreat all the way back to their base.
Additionally, the AI can have a great and large army and just have their army patrol within their own base and never attack the player. So the retreat and attack logic is just bad and anyone can observe this, easily.
The AI used to be good, great even. They had urgency and a threat factor to the player and now they are just extremely wimpy and seemingly scared to attack.
I hope I speak for all the player-base that likes to play against the AI when I say, this is unacceptable and what is the point of playing the game anymore as a player who prefers to play against the AI instead of against real players.
This current AI and its logic is perhaps the worst AI logic in any mainstream game.
To add insult to injury the Devs seemed to have hidden the logic for attacking and retreating, meaning that we can’t even make the AI better for attacks and less retreating through modding because the retreat and attack logic isn’t editable.
To top it all off, once upon a time we were promised AI so smart that even the government would tremble in their boots.
I remember reading this interview way back, with World’s Edge creative director Adam Isgreen and Relic game director Quinn Duffy:
[Age Of Empires 4 Will Eventually Have An AI That You Will Never Beat ]
Fix the AI Logic or lose many players (Specifically the AI Attack and Retreat logic).
Lastly, we would rather have the AI be challenging than them having basically zero threat level. The AI doesn’t even match their hover descriptions anymore (tool-tips) as it says the hardest AI is merciless in attacks.
