Best AIs to play with for a challenging game?

I know most of you probably play with random AIs, but if you wanted to build a standard game (8 AIs) that was fun and challenging, which 8 AIs would you pick?

(Note: Feel free to name AIs from expansions or DLCs)

I'd say Korea, Mayans, and Babylon for scientific competition.
Greeks, Siam, and Austria for diplomatic competition.
Huns and Japan for domination/warlike competition.
France and Brazil for cultural competition.
And the Iroquois spam cities like mad, making them a sometimes-fun/sometimes-annoying wild card.

I like a nice mix of each that are going to go for a different VC.. If you want a nice warmonger place in Monty and pray he's not to close to you, I love Babylon for the rush to science. Gandhi is a nice one because weirdly enoff he trys to take all the darn wonders spits them out like candy, and is usaly the 1st with nukes. Place the Sweden in there because you never know what the heck he is going to do, one sec he is your buddy the next he he is throwing troops at you the next he is giving you everything he owns. Then there is the Vikens if you don't mid loosing all the CS as he loves to grab them all up. That all i can add to this lol

Iroquois's AI almost always performs well in my games. Hiawatha spam cities crazily and Iroquois's UB boosts its production.

Zulu, Poland, Rome and Sweden as they will runaway like the Road Runner.
Maria/Enrico/Alex to eat your CS.
Korea for tech challenger.
Ramsess so you don't get any wonder.

Iroquios and Russia always perform very well in my games. Very expansionistic. Catherine is also obscenely aggressive and back-stabey.

Korea, Maya, Babylon are definitely good science competition. Although Babylon always seems very isolationist and tends to get eaten up by other AIs in my games.

If left unchecked, Austria can be a real nuisance.

This isn't going to include any BNW AIs since I don't have enough experence yet.

#1 in my book: Korea. They are the one AI that actually has both science flavor set correctly that has UA bonuses with them and can be a threat even if they don't expand (since they are growing tall and building all the science buildings)

If you don't have DLC, then #1 is Persia. While part of this is conquest induced, the Persian AI has science enough of a priority to go ahead and build them in both the core empire and any cities its captured (after its annexed it) And Persia's happiness flavor is high enough to keep up.

Glancing above, I see several other civs in the hands of the human are great science civs going tall; but those I tend to find the AI must be playing them wrong since I don't see them towards the top.

But Maya wouldn't even be on my great science list even as a human; those free great people marginally slow down your science by delaying your natural born Great Scientists.

Catherine: Dishonorable mention, she's brought to her knees by any mod promoting the AI up to Prince level happiness and often found to have negative happiness. (Insanely high expansion flavor combined with insanely low happiness flavor.)

For what it,s worth, Siam always does very well in my games.

megabearsfan said:

Iroquios and Russia always perform very well in my games. Very expansionistic. Catherine is also obscenely aggressive and back-stabey.

Korea, Maya, Babylon are definitely good science competition. Although Babylon always seems very isolationist and tends to get eaten up by other AIs in my games.

If left unchecked, Austria can be a real nuisance.

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Babylon AI is depressing. They bulb the free GS

Falconiano said:

Babylon AI is depressing. They bulb the free GS

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Why is that depressing?

Rohili said:

Why is that depressing?

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Because early in the game, it is more optimal to build an Academy with a Scientist (and working it), since the cummulative beakers over the course of the entire game is much greater than the beakers you get from a single Scientist auto-researching a tech, since early techs are cheap.

The only exception I can think of is maybe if you bulb to Civil Service for the extra food.

joncnunn said:

Catherine: Dishonorable mention, she's brought to her knees by any mod promoting the AI up to Prince level happiness and often found to have negative happiness. (Insanely high expansion flavor combined with insanely low happiness flavor.)

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Well obviously, if you change the rules of the game (with a mod), then that will change the effectiveness of the AIs LoL.

Greece and Persia are usually contenders. I haven't too much experience with the BNW civs, but Zulu seem likely to cause problems if they're nearby. Zulu, Huns, China, Maya, France, and Greece. Zulu roflstomped China in the BC while building Temple of Zeus. They then proceeded to get in to it with me and every other civ on the continent at the same time while squeezing in Himeji castle! The only thing that saved me was a bunch of hilly jungle terrain and the fact that I could pound his guys with naval gunfire as he tried to advance. I've never seen a single AI with so many units. He would have probably rolled everyone up if he had managed to keep one front at peace.

megabearsfan said:

Well obviously, if you change the rules of the game (with a mod), then that will change the effectiveness of the AIs LoL.

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That's just it; in standard game the AI ISN'T under the same happiness rules as the human.
The dishonorable part is mostly because players new to civ often try to adopt what strategies they observe the AIs doing. (And will fall flat on their face on Prince+ if they adopt AI Catherine as a model.)

Another AI that often does well is Polynesia. They tend to be quite expansive and generally successful, even though they don't make much use of their uniques.

However, I would say that you can't really fill your entire game with strong AIs. This will in fact make some of them fail after they are oppressed by others. I'd fill the game with half strong civs and half weak, so that the strong benefit from oppressing the weak and get even stronger. I'd choose Iroquois, Polynesia, Siam, Poland and Korea for a nice spread of strong AIs with different ways of annoying you (fast-expanding, CS stealing, missionary spamming, wonder-whoring).