Hi Nordstern84,
Thanks so much for the detailed reply and for the insight into your culture. As someone who is not bilingual I have always had respect and admiration for those that have grasped other languages.
Perhaps I could have been more concise in what I wanted to achieve. Apparently you can mod the AI behaviours via XML file editing, but I don't have much of an idea what parameters relate to key aspects of AI logic.
Ideally I would like to make it so the AI never declare war on each other. I think that would help a lot for the purpose of increasing difficulty.
I am not using any mods at all. Using a fresh Steam install of Anno 1404 - HE.
Good point regarding island access and resource denial, however I think things are quite equitable in my current game. I have only 4 islands on a Huge map. By the looks of it, each AI should have access to at least 4 islands each, perhaps more.
What eludes me the most is that I've played this seed (identical settings) 4 times back-to-back recently on the original 1404 Venice and did not have these issues. The only difference is that in those other games I only had 2 Hard 1 Medium AI instead of 3 Hard.
It has always been the case that in (1404 Non-HE) the AI advance faster than me, especially for the Patrician/Noble transition, but in this HE version they are extremely slow and stupid. I'm now curious if this behaviour is inherent to the HE version.
Somewhat of a breakthrough- just now Lucius finally rebuilt something on his destroyed island. It just took him several hours to do it lol. Granted he only built one farm... I find it slightly annoying as I have not attacked or raided any of the AI islands, nor am I being greedy with island acquisition. This whole thing wreaks of an AI nerf. Either that or really bad luck.