Indeed. I had my butt handed to me in a game last week on hard difficulty and I immediately set it back to normal difficulty after that.
The AIs are relentless. They just keep coming. In that game, I was hopping my best 3 stacks from town to town trying to keep them from taking them and I held back the tide for a while and killed zillions of their good units but it was hopeless. They got too far ahead of me in population and production and went for the throat. They had a lot of high level units which really made it tough.
This really is the best AI I’ve seen a a long, long while in a strategy game.
Yes! I always stick +accuracy equipment on new units.