Is there a way that I can [fairly easily] control what skills / abilities / perks the AI gets when it levels up?

How hard would it be to do?

BTW: I'm a total newb at H5 editing and I want to know if the above is dooable before I "jump in with both feet".

I don't know how to script it in the editor.

But an easy way would be, give them the basic skills in the heroes' properties and let the AI choose how to level them.

In older HoMM games that's exactly what I used to do ... I'd give the AI the base skills and then the AI would level the skills naturally.

However, with HoMM5, I have no way to control what perks/abilities are chosen by the AI and definitely can't control when those perks are chosen.

What I'd like to do is instead of giving the AI everything that I want at Level 1 [thus making the AI hero more powerful than I'd like initially] is to override the perk/skill/ability picking that the AI does at level up with what I want it to have.

since nobody seems to help you and instead of still waiting for someone else to answer your concern, I will.

the file you are looking for is :
GameMechanics\RefTables\skills.xdb

Just change the AIRacesValues section to force the AI to get the best possible skills (and perks) for every faction.

Coefficients seems to range between -1000 and 4000 (4000 meaning it will take it about every time)

My guess would be that you put -1000 in every single skill you don't want the AI to take
then range between 0 and 4000 (by 1000) for the skills you want the AI to have.

For sure those values seems to be coefficients so the result probably won't be perfect, but some testing from you could result in some AI improvement.

Neckie