Noob Q on churchills

I'm pretty newb at this, so please be patient...

I was playing vs an expert British AI, and had the whole map dominated for several minutes during which I built up a bunch of panzer 4's. Then a churchill mk7 appeared and basically killed everything.

I played a 2nd game and tried only getting 2 p4's before teching up and using the rest of my pop on panthers, and what ended up happening was the churchills crushed the p4's, repaired up and then crushed the panthers.

I also tried getting AT guns but the churchills would just straight up kill the crews and run in guys to steal them to use against me. Similarly I thought StuG's were supposed to be anti tank, but they seemed to die instantly without doing any real damage.

I eventually managed to take a game by fully surrounding individual churchills with like a concave of panthers and panzergrenadiers since I had the economic lead in the early game, but that seems like a really roundabout way to counter a specific unit.

How do other people deal with them? Just based on reading tank comparisons it doesn't sound like people consider churchills particularly good, so I'm curious if I'm missing something super obvious.

The game has largely been balanced around how players, mostly specific high ranked ladder players, use individual units.

The way the AI (which does, for the record, cheat hardcore on expert) uses units has never been a concern for how the game has been balanced. I don't think it's even been a factor to be considered.

So, that said, you really must rely on learning, and then abusing, the way the AI works. You don't ambush or trick the AI in anything. You force the AI into making moves since it largely just reacts and counters to your movements and actions.

The AI often will break on itself eventually and just start spamming a single callin unit or sometimes just cease to act.