I do not want the AI to rush effectively. In terms of the attack force, it wasn't an unsensible rush. What made the rush stupid was the 20-tile hike for the "coveted" land of a civ that is only their neighbor in the most relativistic sense. I don't see how playing on a higher difficulty level will change that. They'll just make a stronger, faster stupid move. This is simply behavior that needs to fixed through programming.
However, this thread is primarily about the tendency of post-G&K civ's to arrest their expansion for seemingly no good reason. I will try to post a screenshot so you guys can see that Russia could have easily have a dozen cities by now in the space it has. And since I'm not playing with random personalities, Catherine should be expanding. That's her personality.
This is another bizarre AI behavior. If a barbarian is near your cities, go exterminate it and reclaim your people. How hard is that?
If it takes an army over twenty turns to arrive my door, that means they've had 20+ turns to do other things. As stated, I played into the 1600's and Russia still never bothered to settle another city. Rather, she simply parades a worthless half-dozen ancient-era units around my borders.
Again, I don't see the argument for how things will "work alright" if I up the difficulty. A rush isn't a rush if you can't execute it quickly. Units don't cover vast distances faster at higher difficulties.
True, civ's shouldn't abandon the idea of long-distance conquests. But that's the sort of goal a civ should undertake once it has an established power base. It should make the best use of its current area, turning it into the best production center possible, before it starts sending out long-distance conquest expedition. As an opening move for a single city, that's dicey at best.
And, more to the point of the original topic, failing in that goal seems to be part and parcel of what caused their expansion to arrest.
