Discussion about Heroes 4.

It's still strange. In the previous installments, my AI opponent was quite a worthy adversary (I remember how it repelled the invasion of overly savage barbarians in the first part – it was terrifying...). I wonder how the developers managed to turn the AI from, hmm, a major into a private?

It's just that in the 4th installment, the army depends on the hero a little differently than in the previous and subsequent parts.
In the 4th installment, there are no classic four hero characteristics: attack, defense, magic, and knowledge. Therefore, it seems that the AI simply doesn't know how to use the hero at all – in most cases, the hero for the AI is just a regular unit on the battlefield.

Perhaps the AI wasn't brought to an acceptable level also because of the rushed development.
Although, on the other hand, there is a global mod called Equilibrium, which took far more than a day to create, and yet the AI in it is not much smarter than its previous "version".