First campaign in sfo, I tried going empire to keep it simple. I tweaked some of the settings such as increased growth, enable tabletop caps, etc. Come turn 40+ and as I confederated the counts one by one I notice that the AI has not developed their settlements whatsoever...

They only bother building their main capital city, all the minor settlements are neglected, sometimes even left as ruined villages. I checked some of the other factions around and all of them also seem to neglect their minor settlements... Is this normal or a balancing issue? Maybe sfo removes some of the AI economy cheats and now they are struggling? Can I help the AI along by tweaking some settings, or maybe grab some AI overhaul mod?