How do I continue improving at the game while still fighting AI? Have I peaked?

Started playing recently, I've certainly improved quite a lot. (Thanks SOTL and T90) Using key binds, playing to my CIV's strengths. Entry level micro, abandoned arbitrary "house strats", don't care how pretty my base is, understand counters and high priority targets. However I'm at the stage were moderate bots are much too easy but hard bots are just too hard. I typically play with friends across a variety of maps and we took to using the CD AI as the one just labeled "AI" surrenders WAY too easy, plus this one (to it's detriment at times) builds walls and very rarely towers. To my understanding the HD bots literally cheat in terms of resources so I've basically ruled out fighting that. Maybe a 1v1 against a hard bot is an idea as it's a bit rough to do with a team of human players versing an AI set to the nearest skill level of the best player. To those who may not know in AoE2 all AI in a match must have the same difficulty, so unfortunately unable to put varied AI types against me at once to spice it up like other games. Though I have tried putting the DE AI on a team with the CD AI infront of it to mix up the difficulty.

I know I should just take the plunge and try fighting a person, I'm well aware that there's only so good you can get against bots. It's past a certain point you're developping an entirely different skillset, and certainly with any amount of time against an AI it can become incredibly easy to meta game.

Oh, also I really suck at naval stuff. I've effectively mastered the build order of a regular map but throw boats in and outside of investing into more wood eco I just fall off in that regard. That said, the bots are particularly ruthless with naval combat.