AI defensive strategy

[tm1]

hi
have a question I hope some one may able to answer for me, at the moment I'm playing the long Campaign game (290 points)its turn 62 (20th august 1942)I basically only have to capture one more city and its game over for the AI.
My settings are standard at the moment, Difficulty is level normal, have not played enough yet to go up to the next level.
While playing this game and the previous 2 games I have noticed that the AI will when threatened with its forces being encircled or pocketed will pull its endangered units back out of harms way then advance back into more or less a defensive line.
I don't have a problem with that kind of tactic even a human player would do the same thing to save his troops from being destroyed if he could not launch a effective counter attack.
Like I said this kind of tactic is fine how ever in its efforts to preserve its army it does tend to abandon cities or leave them lightly defended again I see some merit in this if it means saving 10 divisions for a minor city ok.

At the moment I'm quite happy to get these easy victories as I'm not the worlds best Axis player (probable never will be ) and I think the AI is still a challenge, however I captured 2 out 3 Moscow hexes virtually without a fight In Nov 1941. I captured the last hex in early 1942 because I kept pushing units to the rear of the defenders and it kept redeploying.
I captured Rostov in 41 and held it, I then managed to captured Stalingrad in early 1942 using the same encirclement tactics without shot being fired directly at the city. Now if you capture both these cities your basically given the keys to The Caucasus for free.
Moscow is the capital of Russia it should be defended to the death even by the AI in my opinion
Again I'm not trying to sound critical of the AI as I'm still learning the game and if the AI has to abandon cities to save the army again fine but there should be some exceptions to the rules when it comes to vital cities.

So to finally get to the $64 dollar question if I adjust the settings to the next level and put the difficulty up to hard or even higher will that give the AI some punch or can some one suggest some setting thanks.

P.s.

As a rule I enjoy playing both styles of game The Blitzkrieg type short and sharp and the long fight to the bitter end version so I'm going to save this game just before I capture the winning points play through to victory then restart it then play a defensive game right through to the last turn.
For the past 12 months or so I have smashed the AI so by playing through to the end it gives me a chance to better my skills in defence against better quality Soviet troops
TM

[carlkay58]

The usual advice is to play against Challenging AI for a decent game once you have the basics down. This will increase the ratings by 10% for the AI while reducing your ratings by 10% - for a 20% shift. Alternatively, you can do a custom balance where you keep yourself at 100% (so you are used to the number of APs and the abilities your side should have) while increasing the AI to 120%. The AI will also benefit from a few more "cheats" that are available at the 120% threshold - there are some at 110% also but some things become automatic at the 120% level. I prefer the later, I get experience with how my troops will actually handle against another Human and the extra boost from the 120% threshold makes the AI more formidable.