I'd really love to hear your ovearll thoughts on what you think would make the AI play better.
It's my first time playing on this difficulty level and I think for this playthrough it is too early to make any comments on it.
But from my experience playing on challenging difficulty on my previous playthrough, I think one of the things that could be improved is commitment to an attack. In my last video playthrough, Pariden declared war on me while there was the Kraxis empire between them and me and in the end they never even sent an army my way. In other games, I felt like the AI had a tendency to scatter their forces. When the AI declares war, it should be ready to wage war, identify objectives and go after them, one at a time and instead of sending one small army after another, commit some strong forces to the attack until the objective is attained. So far I am not sure I have seen an AI attack me with more than one army (other than having a full army followed by a lone champion which is really not good).
I'll try and keep an eye on the AI during my current playthrough 
On other news, Episode 8 is up:
Let's play Fallen Enchantress - Expert p08
