Exploitable weaknesses in DE Hardest and Extreme AI Sheep management

With the hardest AI, it will not react to my attempts to kill all of the sheep with my scout cavalry until I've killed all of the sheep.

With Extreme, it over reacts and puts all of its villagers in the TC the moment I kill the first sheep. This sounds more defensive but in fact it ends up giving me all or almost all of the remaining sheep and my scout cavalry can simply run off with 3 or 4 sheep with a bit of micro to minimize TC fire.

Either way, it loses 4 to 6 sheep, and with the extreme AI, it hands me 3-4 sheep. So basically it gives me a 6 sheep lead on hardest and a 7-9 sheep lead on extreme.

Surely there is a better way to go about this. Like instead of garrisoning all the villagers, garrisoning all but one villager who sticks with the sheep to stop me from stealing them.