Does the AI still suck at Terra?

I found some threads from Vanilla and some from G&K that said that the AI didn't colonize the new world at all, is that still the case?

...They do...sometimes. Generally it will only really happen for civs with a high naval flavor - England, Spain, the Ottomans, Korea, Carthage, Byzantium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Indonesia, Portugal (their AI seems specifically geared to settle very spaced-out all over the map...as Portugal did in reality, reflected in its city list which is half distant colonies), and obviously Polynesia. I imagine if you put all of these on a map, put the difficulty up a little, made the map a little crowded for the number of civs (for best results, add in Mongolia, the Huns, and the Zulu to drive people away from the interior), and had them all going strong and ready for expansion into the Renaissance era, then there will be plenty of colonization. It definitely helps that, now with luxury resources counting for a decent chunk of wealth through trade routes, the New World offers increased options for those especially inclined to trade. It's not a guarantee that /all/ of these will colonize, but if any of these are in the game, they'll be most likely to do so. Portugal and Spain especially, since they reap the greatest rewards from overseas expansion, and have AI patterns that would lead to colonizing happening easily.

Unless you pack the old world with additional civs and citystates, there's no reason to colonize the new world. There's enough space in the old world, and no one wants the unhappiness hit.

This thread gave me the envy to re-try this script. I picked a Communitas Terra map, took England, Immortal, large and overcrowed with 14 civs and 24 CS. Few runaways fellas such Cathy, Casimir, Bismarck, and naval civ (Spain, Portugal, Carthage).

I started on a peninsula in the tundra on the northern hemispere, Carthage was my immediate neighboor. I rushed the GLh when suddendly Dido massed her troops at my borders. For at least 1000 years I was struggled in a war which crippled my economy (I had only two city, but well defended). I survived mostly by selling luxuries, pillaging maritimes routes, GM missions....

It was tricky, Dido with this ability to cross mountains makes them useless for defense, and the quinqueremes are quite powerful. However, I managed to defend my coasts with 6-7 triremes, using the coastal waters chokepoints. The good side of this early war is your naval units earn XP (I had triremes with logistics) and you can send your GA to explore the New World.
That's how I mostly explored the world, decades before the first caravels. Actually, I enjoyed it, ti was quite realistic, whit all this Terra Incognita in the Renaissance, filled with barbarians and tons of antique ruins... and with three NW, including El Dorado and FoY.

About the AI: I'm currently in the 1500', and the only civ to settle on the New world is Poland. Casimir found two cities, but maybe his UA makes things easier: according to he diplomatic screen, he filled both Tradition and Liberty. I don't know if the others will settle.

Few things: this kind of map is very exciting, I love exploration and geography. I also like Continents, but I find it boring at the Renaissance, almost all the world is known. In this map, it was fun to discover an entire continent, full of barbarians, with good hutties (it was before Archaelogy, so antique ruines and antique site may coexist). It was like a mini-Scramble for Africa scenario..

But to make it more challenging and to force AI to settle overseas, may be some modders could rework this script to make the New World more attractive? By including exotic luxuries that cannot be found on the Old Word -à la Indonesia-, awesome NW, etc?

I think this has to do with the new BNW AI scripts. Ever since BNW the AIs seem to prefer smaller empires to larger ones - even Alexander now often only goes to three or four cities in my games. In Vanilla and to a lesser extent in G&K the AI would just grab every piece of land available whether it was useful or not; now there is often land left unoccupied at the end of my games, which NEVER happened before BNW. So, if they AI calculates that they need a resource or spots a really sick city location on the other continent they may settle it, but they first have to overcome their bias against settling new cities.

There is another current discussion about Exploration tree and colonization, I wish in a future Civ overseas empires would be an alternative to small and continental ones.