I posed this question to support but I wanted to ask it here as well. Also, for clarification, I used to play the hell out of this game, I still own the CD installers for the original Warcraft and Warcraft2 plus the expansion, and I used to love playing against the CPU in custom battles.

I'm re-discovering the game again, which is awesome, but it seems like the CPU runs on a different game speed than I do when I play against the cpu in verses mode. By the time I have a couple grunts out, or even a tower or 2, the cpu comes in with dragons. It's an impossibility to get to that point in the time it goes. I've tried multiple times to do what the cpu does and it's impossible to get enough resources, in the timeframe the CPU gets them, and there's no hardness level either, so as the game stands right now it's completely unplayable, even against 1 opponent.

I remember the game being quick to rush with grunts, but there's simply no way the cpu can get to the point it does, in the time that it does, without it being accelerated in some way, and I fear that porting the game to a faster computer has increased a once small speed advantage to something that's beyond the ability of a player to defend against.

Is anyone else having this issue?

Never experienced what you're talking about.

First though, what map settings did you use?

Was it a regular skirmish map, did you set the starting resources/units to 1 peasant and any value other than UMS?

Did you try using the reveal map cheat (type "on screen" into chat in singleplayer mode) and simply observe what the AI does?

Nope, the AI is a joke. I destroyed 3 of them in a 3v1 the very first game I played.
They do weak builds, expand slow, and don't even micro or properly use spellcasters.