Playing AOE2 since a lot of years again, questions about AI.

Hi guys, after a lot of years, I bought AOE (steam) again and decided to give it a try. I really like it and today I've played a multiplayer game with a friend of mine against AI.

Our first game we decided to go 2 against 3 (AI). And we lost extremely hard, one enemy had a big team of melee horses (scout/knights) and rekt us both very easily.

So then we decided to go 2v2 and we played on an islands map, 4 teams and 4 islands. But the enemy didn't really attack. There were single transport ships send, just some war ships.. is this normal?

Do you guys have any recommendations to play against AI? Certain seed map? Or a steam community map perhaps?