It seems that the AI is still struggling with expansion and keeping up with me production wise.  I have only played on the second-to-hardest level (whatever is above Hard), but the same thing happens.  I believe it may be because of the harder monsters.

I am not SURE this is happening, but what seems to be going on is that the roaming monsters are so much harder to kill that the AI is just losing all of his scouts and pioneers.

Is there a way to make the monsters scale in difficulty to the Human player but leave them easier for the AI?  This would probably be the easiest fix to this issue, and hopefully allow the AI to expand and grow like it does on the easier levels.