Difficulty Levels

I would like it if the AI changed its tactics, rather than got enormous bonuses, as the levels increased. With the importance of researching technologies first, in order to get your own religion, on the equivalent of the current Civ3 higher levels, human players will be easily swept aside.

For example, the AI should purposefully do stupid things on the lower levels. As the level goes up, it's ability to respond to a human threat, analyze what the human is trying to do, etc. should improve.

So, a good, strong AI should be produced, and then chipped away at for the lower levels. It sound rediculous, but it would be much more fun to play against an effective AI than one that is stupid, but has a massive amount of advantages.

Perhaps in some sort of popup window in the game setup screen, you should be able to give the AI certain bonuses, such as starting units, free support, cut production costs, etc.

EDIT: Aftering thinking about this, I'm not quite sure how this would turn out. Perhaps some of the bonuses should remain, but others, such as production bonuses, should be removed in favor of a starter AI.

I would like to see a better AI too. Only giving bonus to AI can make a game harder, but improving AI is better. There are some problems in current AI:
- It knows where are all resources, as well the entire map. It's very common to see AI making a city in a small square besides a existing city and then a strategic resource is in its territory. I put units in these squares to avoid this problem;
- Their units only explore to get barbarian huts - AI must explore as we explore to know territory;
- It also travels your territory to kill some barbarian that we didn't see yet;
- It should build cities in better locations, giving preferences to get fresh water and bonus resources - and not building cities in middle of a tundra or a desert or even beside a volcano;
- Instead of demand things as "tribute" they could ask something like "I wish to have your nice spices. Could you trade it with my furs?" before. It is something like we ask "What do you want to trade for it?" which exists in Civ3. Demanding tributes (even if it don't start a war) to large and/or strong civs is not a wise idea;
- Instead killing a strong unit with only one hitpoint remaing, AI prefers to get slaves or retreat if its unit is also in red level. Usually it brings new units to try to kill that unit.

There may be more problems like these, I just put those I remember now.

I've been thinking along these same lines also. I think that Chieftain, Warlord, Regent, etc. up to Sid should be package default settings for the AI (as they are in III) but I think that you should be able to go into each heading and make changes. Sometimes, I just want to kick everybody's butt and not worry about it, so it would be fun to go into Chieftain, give my CIV most of the luxuries and resources, block the map for the AI, etc. and just whoop on everybody. Conversely, I might want to beef up the AI and do serious battle. It would at least be nice to know what the AI advantages are at each setting at default.

It would also be nice to be able to change settings such as your starting position, allowing the AI (or not) to know where the resources are (or allowing yourself to know), etc. I'd just like a much broader range of game playing choices besides the default settings.