I notice that even with Expert settings, the AI does not get enough of a bonus to explore much if their territory pretty much has any monsters at all in it.

usually, by turn 10, they are defeated by the monsters and cowering in their keeps, healing up.

seriously, has anyone done a mod to basically just give the AI a decent starting army on higher difficulty levels?  also, with each difficulty level should boost the level of the sovereign AI by 2. so, easy means they are same level as you, normal means 2 levels higher, hard means 4 levels higher, expert 6 levels higher... etc.

give them enough of a starting army so they can easily defeat medium strength monster armies, and have a 50/50 chance against strong ones, from day one.

THAT is the main thing that is limiting the AI being a challenge in this game.  I have watched a dozen games develop with the shroud turned off, and ALWAYS, the AI does something stupid with his tiny army and gets whacked.  which sets their development back miles.

it's an easy fix, really. makes me think someone has done it already, but I can't find a specific mod for it.  I did make an AI faction that had uber bonus traits, and even started off with a baby dragon.  That one actually performed somewhat better, not surprisingly, *almost* matching my regular development with my own team (maybe only lagging by 20%).

boost the level of the sovereign by 4, give it another decent member to the army (good archer likely), and by turn 60 or so, it should be doing fairly well.  It's just so much hassle to program all this in, just for a slight challenge.

as it is, basically you are fighting the map, not the ai.  I typically only bother with quest victories any more, and even those are pretty easy really.