The normal version of the game gives you this. The historical setting and In theory at least, an AI that plays fair by numbers and veterancy. The goal, from what they've said, is to make the AI as good as possible against human players.
The difficulty settings then exists for those who either can't compete with the AI and for those for whom an Ai will never truly challenge without bonuses, which won't happen for many years I suspect. Not until you make a learning AI anyway at which point we might all have to play on easy.
No, I don't want an endless stream of dlc, and I certainly don't want them to go total war style on us.