Penalties just seem extreme. I play my games play to play. Usually I'm penalized 10-15 times a game, and the AI team gets maybe 5 at the most. Is there something I can do to tone that down a bit?

There are many things that drive penalties. Morale, intelligence, game plan for aggressiveness, hard mode, etc. You'd have to dive deeper to figure out if one or two bad players are causing them, or if it's an issue with the game plan and adjust from there.

So I noticed in the game planning both offense and defense were set to aggressive. I set them to balanced and it helped a bit. Thanks for the reply.