Impressed by the AI...

I'm not exactly one to sing the graces of the AI usually, what with their Archaeologist/Carrier spam and their terrible troop movement, but it does seem to have its moments of glory. I'm watching an autoplay game at the moment, and the two big civs that have been right next to each other and allies for most of the game have finally declared war.

Why? Because Portugal was threatening a diplomatic victory. The Japanese made the bold decision to swoop in and take a bunch of her allied city states, rather than attacking her heavily fortified cities. In the end, they managed to take 4 city states in 12 turns and managed to just stop her claiming the diplomatic victory.

The game isn't over yet so I'm not sure if the Japanese will follow up, but it's little tactical plays like this that give me hope that the AI wasn't coded by a lemur. Has anyone else seen any awesome plays from the AI at the last second?

EDIT: The Russians and Austrians have also swooped in and taken some city states, so obviously the AI does actually try to fight back against certain victory types. That said, I've never been in a position where the AI has dealt with my diplomatic victory attempts so efficiently. D:

In my first Portugal game all 4 Order civs DoW'd me (10 turns before my supposed victory), with the shoshone using a naval invasion and the other 3 bordering me. I had to sail all around the map with my fleet of ships.
By the time the World Leader vote came about I had Venice join with me in the war, I wiped Morocco out, and I must have liberated at least 4 City State allies.

So in my experience the AI does try and stop your victory attempt, but my Portugal victory above was probably the funnest ending I've had with BNW.

I remember one game I had, where I was playing the Mayans and aiming for a Science victory, Greece almost won a diplomatic victory, but the liberated English bought out a city state ally on the final world leader turn and ended up voting for and winning the game for me! I had spent all of my money on city state allies to try and stop Greece, but I was still one short, so England literally gave me the victory in that case. I'll never say anything bad about Lizzie again.

It was like my third game at the time and I was seriously confused about what happened. In the end I decided that Pacal and Lizzie just decided to assassinate Alexander at the UN. He got what was coming to him...

I wish the AI would do that when I was threatening a diplo victory! If they did I might even play with that condition on.

Greece has done this to me in my current game. Alex was allying with city states like crazy. When I started threatening his diplo victory chances by couping several of his allies, he finally decided to declare war on me to stop me. And I have to say, after having several wars with Alex in the game, his tactics aren't actually half bad. Usually he brings groups of diverse units and goes after my stray units first and surrounds them to finish them off quicker. I've had several tough wars with him already and they weren't easy. By comparison, my wars with Maya & Assyria were stupidly easy, so I guess not all the AI's are tactically equal.