[Tris]

Theory:

(Examples in brackets)

Good human players pursue a strategy.

(Kill the players nearest me by pushing directly on their capital to create expansion room.)

It is possible to summarise this strategy, at the cost of some detail and effectiveness.

(Buy expensive troops and send spies to find enemy capital, send expensive troops straight there.)

Several such strategies might exist for each nation. By randomly picking one when it knew which nation it was playing the AI would have variety and competance, to a degree.

You would not know if the AI was going to try to rush your capital, push your dominion, research for a specific spell/spell combo/summon...

It could also switch given certain conditions (eg if you don't find an enemy castle within 7 turns, switch to random other strategy for this nation)