With all due respect Schwartzritter, you're critiquing TMO and, according to your first post ("
The TMO AI is pretty brutal. From what I have read") you haven't even tried it. I'm not trying to say that you'd like it. I'm just having difficulty reconciling your opinion of the mod w/o having played it.
Personally, I like TMO and do not find the AI overwhelming. Challenging yes, overwhelming no. I think you might actually be surprised if you ever fire it up.