You can't compare the civ4 AI versus the very bad civ5 AI.
The civ5 AI is very handicapped due to the 1 UPT mechanic and the lack of roads on hexes.
This isn't even about Civ V, even the BTS AI is also pretty handicapped. The AI remains rather poor at handling siege units so it isn't great at attacking cities or dealing with large stacks. If you play on a difficulty level without massive AI bonuses the general picture is the AI will turtle up in its cities if attacked by a superior force (with defenders dispersed amongst its cities rather than massing in the cities under immediate threat), then helplessly wait to be brought down by collateral damage from siege weapons. A human defender would build siege units of their own to counter-bombard the attackers - the AI rarely does this.
What you're not seeing, is, that all traits have advantages in war, not only the direct advantage of Combat I. If a critical unit i. e. is reached a few turns faster with being FIN or PHI, it can face completely different defenders. If one gets more cities with IMP, that means additional units in war a.s.o.
This is of course entirely true. Yet, as was pointed out it's somewhat countered by
I am reading a lot about gaining a tech advantage, which yes works very well to win.
AGG should use a different strategy and that is to pillage improvements gaining gold for themselves to tech and to slow down their opponent's ability to tech.
- basically, you shouldn't allow the FIN civs (or others with economical traits) to just run with the game. I haven't played Civ IV MP but if I did I would make a point to target the a FIN player rather than a PRO one, when viable. Having a strong economic ability paints you as a target. FIN even makes a player more likely to build cottages rather than other improvements, which are juicy pillage targets. Meanwhile, I would hate having to attack a PRO player controlled by a human, thinking opponent. Massive defensive boost, making taking any of their cities much more costly? Super-archers, walls and castles everywhere? Would you really invest massive hammers into an offensive army if all you can hope to accomplish is some pillaging, losing units and accruing war weariness in the process? Yeah, no thanks, I'd rather pick on somebody else where the chances of capturing cities are better. You can still pillage PRO lands just the same, of course, but pillaging is always dangerous as there's not just hammer investment, the upkeep and the lack of healing in enemy lands to consider but also the enemy building the exact formations that will counter your stack once you're stuck deep in enemy territory. The PRO trait gives an edge in this area since you can run with a lighter defensive force heavy on archery units until/if attacked and still be safe (enemy may pillage lands but taking PRO cities is much less an option) then build a stack specifically designed to counter invading stack if enemy ops for pillaging. The PRO player may lack in
but he has more
that can be applied specifically and more effectively against a threat. PRO players are simply bad, costly targets - which makes them more likely to be left alone, thereby an indirect economic advantage.
Of course, PRO is a weak trait against the AI because, as mentioned, one of the main things the tactical AI isn't very good at is assaulting cities/dealing collateral damage, so the trait is overkill. Further, the AI fails to do things like target the FIN opponent with no defensive bonuses because that simply isn't how it's programmed. The Civ IV AI is a roleplayer - an AI with every reason to oppose you will still love you for arbitary reasons like shared religion or the favourite civic mechanic. I view this as one of Civ IV's main shortcomings because it makes games too predictable and makes the AI too easy to manipulate. I think Firaxis did the right thing with Civ V by having the AI 'play to win' more - it just didn't work out well for other various other reasons. A little roleplaying helps produce more of a narrative for a game and makes the world believable but in IV it drives the game entirely.
My experience is that Aggressive isn't a great trait in most MP-setups, but its better than in SP.
I'd also dispute that Civ4 is balanced around multiplayer.
Not balanced around MP, but at the same time I think it is more accurate to say it is balanced around MP than SP. Basically, it is balanced around the assumption that the parties involved are all able to play the game. The AI is just an AI and has its limitations, thus is not fully able to 'play the game'. PRO is clearly more valuable when the threat of losing cities is much more real, as is AGG when it is equally more difficult to attack.
This has been the balancing system for all the Civ games (a good thing, too, since it's the right way to do it). Firaxis never balances around AI deficiencies and I hope they never will. Because the AI is never perfect and can't play the rules it breaks the system and causes players to call out various things as being unbalanced, whether it's PRO/AGG here or 'useless' mounted/melee units in Civ V. Things likely aren't 100% perfectly balanced but more often than not balance complaints are due to how the AI is unable to fully operate some game system.
