An interesting read. Alas I feel differently about the AI. I don't play that often, and this new AI 2 is around my third play through since early access started.
I can understand why the OP thinks about the AI the way he does, and for someone with his apparent experience and knowledge of the game that's not really surprising. I come to this from the angle of someone who, to all extents and purposes, is more like a first-time player; an experienced CRPG player perhaps.
I'm getting slaughtered. I spend most of my time unable to do anything. The AI seems to always manage to go first and most of my party spends the fight lying down (tripped/knocked etc). More often than not if I'm not fully tooled up and ready beforehand I lose a party member in the first or second round and the rest of the party soon after. I've not won a single fight without reloading (many times) where I did not initially out-number my opponents.
I'm starting to "cheat" to get past some fights. For example have one character lock an NPC in conversation while the others surprise attack the rest, i.e. triggering the fight on my terms. Starting fights early by picking off one of the "linked" NPCs at the edge of the group with a concentrated damage burst and so forth.
I consider this cheating because I'm forced to resort to meta-gaming (i.e. knowing that a fight will happen, exploiting real-world knowledge about the software and the game to solve in-game problems, knowing the "future") instead of my in-game characters solving it with just the knowledge they are expected to have.
I find my spells are always on cool-down and I run out of things I can do as a mage because I have far fewer spells available now because I cannot afford to buy them. I actually started going around slaughtering random NPCs and anything I could find just to try and get my party experience and money up so I'd have a better chance of beating the fights. Killing people I don't want to kill to gain XP so I can progress isn't my idea of role-play, nor really of fun.
The story mode is totally unbalanced right now in my view and anyone who doesn't know the game mechanics in-depth and doesn't know about the NPCs they are fighting in advance as well as knowing the world in depth to get the most out of their party (min-maxing) will die horribly and very quickly. The current difficulty level is about where I'd expect a Hard / Very-Hard difficulty level to be; for someone who has completed the game a couple of times and wants a tougher challenge.
That said, I love the new AI in the arenas. When you have two parties that are balanced and with equivalent/identical equipment and spells the AI does really well and is a real challenge and a joy to play against, whereas before it was simply too easy to defeat. I don't spend that much time in the arenas, and I can see why some of the more expert players might like the AI to be stronger still, but for me, with less experience, I find it actually rather enjoyable and challenging now and I can actually learn from the AI, which I consider brilliant.
For the story mode I think the AI needs to either be toned down a lot or the resources available to the party need to be considerably increased. I feel a large balance pass is required.
