Right now the AI players aren't really opponents, they're decorations. They don't have real economies, they don't manage supply chains, they don't actually compete with you for anything that matters. Without that it's just SimCity with togas.
Think about what could be possible. Cutting off olives or resin and watching an AI's cities buckle. Entering a long war about trade routes. Pressuring a province they can't defend because their economy is stretched thin. None of that is on the table because there's no economy to disrupt in the first place.
I saw the comment about Patch 1.5.0. I read the notes. The trade behavior tweaks are welcome but they don't fix this. The AI's internal economy is still fake, they aren't really producing and consuming goods on a chain you can break.
Pre-empting the "it's not possible" replies: it absolutely is. StarCraft AI has been mining minerals and managing tech trees since 1998. Civ AI runs full economies with diplomacy, science, military, the lot. AoE, Total War, basically every serious strategy game in the last 25 years has shipped with this. Anno markets itself as a strategy title and has competitive AI in the box. The bar really shouldn't be lower than a 1998 RTS.
And for those of us who have jobs and kids and can't reliably block out 6 hours for an MP match, single player against real opponents is the only way the strategy layer of this game actually exists. Otherwise the trade routes and diplomacy systems are just expensive window dressing on a solo city builder. We already have SimCity. We bought Anno because we wanted something more.
Love the game. Please give us real opponents.