I'm trying to play a team mode with the AI and I'm kinda confused. I go into custom game and choose Team Battleground as the map. I choose top vs bottom, choose my civ, then launch. The thing is that no one is on a team when I play! Am I doing something wrong?

You have to put you and an AI on the same team.

Up along the bars where you choose what leader to play/difficult level there's a bar to choose which team your on.

Same goes with the AI.

Normally the teams are just 1,2,3,4,5 etc up to however many people/AI's there are.
So you have to change it to the same teams (e.g. 1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4).

fantastic. Thanks!

csmith963,

Are you familiar with how the game handles research for teams? It's a little awkward, but you may with to know if you want to [ab]use it to the best of your advantage.

Well after playing until the middle ages I have a good idea. We share tech. If we both research the same tech it speeds up the process. Is there anything else I'm missing?

Yes, a bit, csmith963. But don't feel bad. I didn't know this until it was explained to me, either.

I don't know the exact formula, but it works out in such a way that the cost of a tech is multiplied by a figure that has to do with the number of teammates a team has. The more teammates the more expensive the tech.

How can you use this to your advantage? If you're smashing someone on a team into the dark ages, leave them with one below average city. Because they still have X people on their team, their entire team has to spend more beakers to research something than if they had X-1 people, and if they have a terrible city, they won't ever be anything useful again. Their existence will be a hindrance to the rest of their team.