Most of the problem is that it’s allowed to get lucky. As I understand it, on the PC the AI will never pass up a 4-match or a skull match. Here in console-land, sometimes it does, and when it passes up skull match in favor of a 3-match only to have the top row fall in with 4 skulls (and so on), our monkey brain’s confirmation bias thinks that happens more often than the times when is does a 3-match for no good reason.
(Also, the AI seems to completely give up once it’s down to a single troop, only taking skull matches maybe 20% of the time or so then. Does the PC version do that?)