For various reasons I'm not really able to do netplay, and as such I'm kind of limited to skirmish mode against the AI. I'd really like to like this game but I find the AI to be rather lacking. Namely, it seems to be really susceptible to rushing, and, in turn, favors rushing* as its own main tactic. Which essentially turns the game into a contest of who can produce units the fastest which seems like it really removes a lot of nuance and complexity from the game.

I've heard about a number of AI mods, so all is not lost, I guess! However, there seem to be a lot of mods out there and I'm not really sure which AI related mods are considered the... best?

http://www.shonner.com/ta/tacomputerai.htm Lists a bunch and gives a rundown on its main mod, which is Metal Ground, and some of the other AIs.

The other thing is a lot of the AIs sound like they have really specific methods as to how they work and I'm not clear if you can have multiple AIs installed at once and randomly switch between them, or what.

You'll want Switeck's AI. What it does is add AI profiles in .txt files that are suited to the different maps. For example, it will assign the "Hover" profile to small-medium sized island maps.

http://switeck.tauniverse.com/

Try the "mostly harmless" AI there. You'll need to install the bugfix patch (go with 1.6 Final) first though, it fixes a lot of issues that were left in TA 3.1. Make sure you check the readme files that accompany them.

Excellent! I will check that out this week. Thanks.