Yea squaddies is particularly bad this year. Last year I'd play most of my games on Legendary, and World Class if it was a super tough team. This year there's no chance of me touching Legendary. It's not worth the headache.
The AI this year is infuriating. It's always been pretty possession based, but this year with the nerf to defending it's insane. There's almost no chance of getting the ball off them, or even near them for that fact before they pass or even worse, run back toward goal.
I'm playing mostly on world class this year, I'm lucky to have a pretty good team, I haven't lost a squaddies yet, but even so 9 times out of 10 I end the game with something like 30-35% possession. It's pretty bad. It seems to be that all they do is adjust the reaction time at each difficulty, which is stupid. It doesn't seem to matter what rating a player is, they'll always make a perfect pass, just slower at lower difficulties. There needs to be an implemented mechanic for error in squaddies, so that players of low ratings at least play to that rating, meaning, if they have low passing stats for example, sometimes they fumble a pass or overpower it, it would add a level of human error to the game that would be realistic. At the moment AI squads execute everything perfectly, just more slowly at lower difficulties. Also please for the love of god introduce a tactic for them that isn't just "play possession" the entire time. I don't think I've played a single squad battles game this year where the opponent AI has attempted one over the top through ball or a single cross.
