I don't think we got by on levels from the time I was on the team (S3-S8)
we did get by on basic AI for a long time, I don't know what our settings were because Randy never shared them. We really didn't start looking hard at games until SGA started dominating, and when he put in the actual work, we won pretty handily. Say what you want about Randy, but he was a damn good owner and always gave us what we wanted, (max contracts, trading and rescuing our players of bad teams, money to shift around equipment) and really put EEPRO on the map, along with SGA and now Emmaus.
I can see why he quit, he was our recruiter ( even though we didn't bring in a lot of new people in), OC, and DC, and posted the majority of the topics on the forum. I know he has some busy r/l stuff to do with his dissertation and all that, so I hope the guy is doing alright.