So everyone has been talking about how dumb the AI is. And I have seen the AI do a few questionable things.

But has anyone actually tried.. you know.. raising the difficulty? I mean, this is my 5th total war game. I'm used to how to control this stuff. Maybe they have the AI make mistakes so new players can capitalize and feel good. But have people tried turning it to max difficulty and seeing if they still win? I haven't done it yet because I'm away from my PC, so I don't know. But I have a feeling we might be misjudging the situation a little...

I've been reading that the AI doesn't really scale to be any smarter even on legendary.

I've been playing it on legendary since release. All the AI has done is kamikaze one or two units at a time into my garrisons making the game absurdly easy. When it does build full stacks, it likes to build mass numbers of mob units and slingers while I already have legionaries. From a diplomatic point of view as well, unlike previous TW games, the AI seems to be extremely reticent to declare war on me.

For reference, Shogun 2's legendary mode was no joke and required a combination of both extreme luck and foresight to even survive past the first few turns.