In my opinion, this is where a lack of experience with the fourth game comes into play. Or maybe it's simply not enough experience? After all, you can play not only against the AI... The AI behaves "a little strangely" everywhere. You can only get real action and excitement by playing against a human.

And that's one of the reasons why the AI seems to be struggling. On the "beginner" and "apprentice" levels, it's not very interesting to play against the AI. It's clear that the AI attacks less and you have more strength. It's just not interesting. And it's very difficult to truly experience the game.

Where am I going to find a second person to play with? :o Should I teach my dog or my mother how to play Heroes? :D I'll teach my clone to play against the AI as soon as I grow one. The strangest thing is that in the third game, the AI on the Normal level behaved quite normally and even occasionally gave me a hard time.

I don't know. I tried higher levels, and it just turned into a frustrating experience. I spent a couple of weeks gathering troops just to try and conquer something, because the mines were guarded by simply monstrous hordes of creatures. Then I ran into an AI opponent who, apparently, wasn't bothered by neutral armies at all. It had an army three times larger than mine, and I was simply crushed. So, the highest difficulty level is for complete maniacs. I play to relax, not to prove to myself how awesome I am :o