[Fantomen]

The AI is challenging at first. And you can crank up the difficulty to keep it so. The sharp learning curve of this game will probably even make you lose a lot of games initially.

However challenging does not mean smart or complex, when you learn more and more advanced strategies the AI will not match it, simply because the game is too complex for the AI and most of the strategies have been developed by players long after the AI was written. And you cannot learn much from watching the AI play. You could say the AI resembles a more or less powerful mob of mindless monsters.

Like Gandalf mentioned, as time passes you can also adjust the game so the AI gets more easy access to the few strategies it can actually handle, involving predesigned gods, settings, modding out useless units and so on. But it will still be stupid. It's more like putting the sharp knives on the top shelf so the baby can't reach it, what you cannot do is teach it to use the knife.

The game is still worth it for SP in my opinion, but as a MP game it's downright outstanding.