The kid and I play local multiplayer together which works fine and has potential to be huge fun. We ally and set for allied victory but the AI is just out of control crazy hard. In a fair fight we've yet to be anything but annihilated. Maybe 1 in three games we can pull of a win with the two of us allied against one computer opponent.

We're both ok at single player and have each just about finished the SP campaign, so we do understand gameplay and tactics.

This last attempt this morning I clicked steady for ten minutes and then was wiped away by a massive AI army just as I was establishing a reasonable home garrison. I really couldn't have built any faster and I still wasn't even a contender.

I vaguely remember from playing this game new 20+ years ago that there was a way to adjust computer AI in local multiplayer but I can't find any setting for it now. Is there a way to do it and I'm just missing it?

Thanks for any advice.

No. It's not possible to adjust the difficulty. The AI is crippled enough as is. It's been ages since I played multiplayer, but what you can try to do is scout for the comp at the beginning of the game, and rush footmen/grunts. You focus on killing the comp's workers, while your ally destroys their farms.

The official guide (http://classic.battle.net/war2/) has some pretty good tips, if you haven't checked it out already.

do you ever tried playing 1x2 vs AI custom map? most of them are using "land attack" the hardest ai(in my opinion)
In campaign AI got higher time production, than land attack(for example normal production is 1 in campagin sometimes AI got 1000!)

There are some custom modifications, but they are designed to make the AI stronger, not weaker.
If you have problems to play 2 vs 2 comps, that means you have some big problems with your gameplay. There are some replays 1 player wins against 7 comp opponents.
AI opponents are the same for single and multiplayer game, they are 4 types: land attack, air attack, sea attack and passive.
2 players vs 2 land attack computers should be easier normally than 1 player vs 1 land attack computer. Check types of AI in map editor. Maybe you play 1v1 vs air and 2v2 vs 2 lands or w/e?

I would try to edit the map and decrease the amount of resources that the opponent has (but don't go below what is needed to build town/great hall if everyone is starting with just one peasant/peon). This way you will slow down its progress and have time to prepare for the attacks. You can add some resources for yourselves to further increase the gap. Just remember to use 'map default' resources when creating the multiplayer game (or 'use map settings' via battle.net) to actually use the one you've set up.

You can also add some units/walls or edit the map so that you have some kind of defense at the beginning.

One way is to use a campaign map as a base (which has all the AI's used in the campaign built into the map) and create a map for yourselves using one of the easier AI's. (this can be done using the regular map editor).

The other method would be to download a custom map editor to add AI's to an existing map

The AI is kind of bad in the game, so the difficulty depends strongly on the map. It might very well not find the path to the next mine and get stuck forever.

The best way for having an enjoyable "My friends / relatives and me vs. AI" is to open an existing map in the map editor that you want to play. Then you look which starting positions you want to have, then go to Player Condition menu and set all other sides to "Computer". Confirm.

Then for the player positions, I recommend already placing the town hall / great hall, this gives you enough of a headstart to be ready for the AI before it attacks.

Now the problem is that he AI is actually too easy in the long run, so I also recommend editing the gold mines near the positions of the AI players to have at least 80000 gold in them.

Try playing AI on B.net maps rather than classic maps. the AI on b.net maps seems to be better than AI on classic maps

example: Garden of War.pud vs Garden of War BNE

Thank you all for the replies.

After a lot of experimenting I now have quite a different opinion of the AI difficulty than I did initially...

I tried about ten other maps and beat them all handily. Some of them I played 4 computer opponents and didn't even take casualties. I am not an Expert player by any stretch; I just patiently apply tactics I learned from the single player game. I observed several of the ridiculous idiosyncrasies of the AI that you all have pointed out. On one map the AI won't even build troops - just peasants...

The only hard one is coincidentally the default custom scenario first map I tried, "Gold Separates East from West". That one I've tried over and over and am still only succeeding maybe 30% of the time, mostly by circumstance where the enemy is initially placed and whether it builds with land AI or air AI. Anyway the challenge on that map I find extreme, whereas some of the others are trivial. So my extended observations concur that much of the "difficulty" is baked into the map design and how the selected AI handles that design.