LOL.  I never thought about that possibility, but I certainly believe you, now that you mention this.

Combat AI (and AI in general) will be improved in the long run, I think.

Try XL or XXL maps with Ecomental.  It'll be harder to reach your opponents in a decent amount of time before they build up.

Yeah, I too just had a Hard playthrough where I found myself rushing a nearby AI.  Didn't mean to, but they settled a city in that great spot RIGHT ahead of my settler.  Infuriating, they had to die.  Anyway, yeah as the OP says the AI never gets any better at protecting itself against an early rush (or any kind of a rush, in my experience) so I rolled right over four cities before I even founded my second one.  I too couldn't believe how quickly these cities had developed, and now they are all mine!  Kind of ruined the rest of the game.

Giving harder AI difficulties bonuses to their starting cities is NOT a good way to boost difficulty.  As the OP says, it just makes the game that much easier once the player takes them.  I second the recommendation that AI units get bonus levels (including city defenders, if possible), and AI heroes should be immune to injuries.  The AI needs help managing its military.

In Civilization IV (and Fall From Heaven), cities typically will lose a little over half their structures each time they are captured.  Having myself been astounded at the goodies you can capture in FE in a high-difficulty game early rush, I can see why that mechanic exists.   

If you move the challenging factions to hard, you'll probably notice a difference.  Hard is where things start to take off.

ha, in ffh it was more like 95%. almost nothing is left

but structures aren't the only thing here. There's also the base attributes of the city, values that a player just can't get in my experience

You're doing it wrong.  You should try a "Heroic" + "Wanderlust" + "Betrayers" combo.  It's ridiculously overpowered in more than one way, but in this particular case I'm talking about:

1. Spend Gildar to buy quests maps

2. Use quest maps to generate quests

3. Solve quests to get influence

4. Use influence to have cities join your side

5. Use cities to generate more Gildar

6. Back to 1.

For bonus points, pick 'Men' as your race, and make solving quests trivial by stacking your sovereign with as many henchmen as you can.

Each henchman should start with "Bard", "Shieldwall" and "Potential", wield a lightning hammer, and prioritize the "Potential", "Trainer", and "Tactician" lines.  Those stack, and henchmen do not reduce the gained XP.  So by turn 80 you see henchmen with levels in the mid 30s, and a stack of those can kill three ashwake dragons before they can act ONCE.

By the way, you can do the exact same thing with scions, but you will have to spend twice the influence on them.

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Ah well, I just realized that you cannot stack all of these anymore.  Good job, devs, that one needed to die!  Just modify your strategy to get quest maps from Altar.  Make them sure you scout them early and keep them alive.

It's less time consuming than you think.  By turn 80, you do 2-3 quests per turn on average. By turn 100, you are flipping a city each 5 turns or so, with one stack.  I was too lazy to get more than one stack doing the quest loop, but there's nothing stopping you.

Hey, I actually corrected that BEFORE your post.  (I tried to do it in 1.02, and realized that now some of them have higher costs)

Still, you can do it by using Altar's quest maps.  I actually found this strategy with a custom Empire, by using a subjugated Altar's maps and my scions. 

Tuidjy just got himself nerfed !

Although the title of this thread is totally paradoxical and quite funny, it only exemplifies the common ground which is that the AI can't handle all in strategies early on when playing under ridiculous diffculty. This is link to the way the AI behave by expanding in a suicidal fashion and the fact that is only vary rarely produce units early.

Make them produce a couple of spearmen, militia, mages with ice staff, trogs with spears. But please make them pick up items after they clear lairs before anything else.

Damn you lucky beta tester! Welp you just got yourself another supporter of your cause.

Making monster spawn dense is part of the problem, with the game on hard the AI pretty much sucks at handling the monsters. Part of it is AI pathing of their heroes. Don't want to lose your city to a pack of 3 assassin demons or a big group of ogres? Well, you need Fireball, but more importantly you need Freeze to keep them in place long enough to get to them with your relevant hero. The AI doesn't seem to get that.

I like dense monsters because I am addicted to leveling my troops and heroes, for no particular reason they are mostly demi gods by level 12 anyway and I could plow through the AI at any time after but it's just fun to see how powerful you can get. I like to create a melee god and send him after all those magic immune creatures and well, dragons as well because there is no good ice damage spell for individual targets.