Here's something interesting: it turns out that even on a micro-map you create yourself, where you know everything, you can see the AI cheating right on the first day! His hero has no artifacts or spellbooks, but he shamelessly walks on water! I replaced his Azure Dragons with Golems. When there's only one Golem, the hero completely avoids the elementals, not even fighting them.
And this can really be used in mapmaking. For example, by placing guards on the water that we can't destroy, but only trigger a powerful enemy hero to attack them.