How do you increase the AI's effectiveness?

After playing only a handful of games me and two friends played a 3v3, locked teams, against Hard AI.  We won effortlessly.  We didn't lose any cap ships in the process, we lost very few frigates/cruisers, and none of our planets were ever seriously threatened.  That was too easy to be enjoyable.  It was inevitable that we'd be able to handle the Hard AI sooner or later, but I didn't expect it to happen so soon.

Now, one obvious option for us is to play against more computers.  We could go 3v6.  However, I'm hoping it won't come to that so soon, as that type of thing really has limited appeal to me.  I was thinking that maybe the computer simply does better on certain types of maps, and under certain conditions.  What I would like to do is to play a game tailored to the computers strengths.

Is the computer better at maps with strategic bottlenecks?  Or with more wide open affairs?

Is the computer better at fast games with fast research? Or slow games with slow research?

Is the computer better at smaller maps? Bigger maps?

Maps with longer phase lanes? Shorter phase lanes?

etc?

I realise that the headline of 1.03 is better AI, and hopefully it will make the computer more competitive, but that's a week or two away.  Maybe nothing will make the computer, in its present form, challenging when played on even ground, but there has to be map types that the computer is at least mildly better at.

Would appreciate any suggestions.