I know this problem. You've got BUG interface and PAE is not adapted to it.
There's a line about that in the PAE ini file.
I assure it's gonna be relaxing. It's defintely not as hard as a regular BTS game. TAM (a previous mod about ancient era) was definitely harsher than PAE. Starting IMM+, yuck, the AI were almost all runaway. Discovered later it is because TAM creator started his mod while Vanilla was out and kept Vanilla AI bonuses...thus making AI as hard as Warlords Deity.