Should the AI's ability rise enough that it can do without handicaps on Monarch for example, weakening it at lower difficulty levels would definitely be good.
First goal is of course to get the AI to a level where hidden bonuses can be removed and overall bonuses lowered. I'm waiting for the day when the AI doesn't have bonuses on deity and thus has to be crippled (without giving bonuses to humans) by choosing weaker algorithms at lower levels
I've done some testing now, playing with 07-01-08 build and handicaps. I've played at Prince, with chipotle on so that I can observe the AI (thus these games aren't normal competitive games).
To begin from the later part of the game: the number of units is staggering. I think this is good, as I needed way bigger army than before to go around waging wars. And the number of units meant higher WW too. I let the slider go up to 70% culture before going to Police State - and that was not with mechs and modern armor but with arties and infantry. Essentially later wars can be fought by human player only with Police State or the WW will be crippling.
Requiring more units from the human player, as well as the related higher WW, actually means that peaceful game by skillfull diplomacy is reasonable choice. The keyword there is of course diplomacy. When one can't keep up in the power game (and no, it's simply not possible with eg. Ragnar around), the way to keep out of unplanned wars is to choose friends and enemies carefully, then make sure the friends are friends and the enemies are fighting someone else all the time.
I did go peaceful rexing to see how that works, and it was just fine. Of course I could say that I lucked with Bismarck being the only one I shared borders with, not eg. Monty.. But even if the AIs seemed to keep me on the list of war targets, they always found a better target and thus I could keep out of wars.
Any AI going cultural seems doomed. Unless he's bordered by peaceful AIs only that is.. Liz went cultural and Alex smelled an easy target. Another time Mansa went cultural, and Mehmed (who I didn't think of as aggressive guy) decided that there was someone without army to take on. In both cases, the AI was low in power and lacking diplomatic skill (which is how the human survives) just didn't have a chance anymore. But who am I to complain - Mansa built a nice bunch of wonders and even a double-holy city for me, ripe for picking when Mehmed asked for a buddy to a war
Some questions about what I can observe:
When mousing the AI area with Alt pressed, I can see the AI strategy information. I've seen the following at least:
- Dagger
- Production
- Cultural1
- Cultural2
- Missionary
Out of these, Dagger has been discussed extensively here, and I'm assuming the culturals refer to different methods of going for cultural victory. Missionary has been adopted by those with shrines, and looks fine. But what is Production?
Other code on the area has been:
- NEUTRAL
- DEFENSIVE
- OFFENSIVE
- ASSAULT
- MASSING
This seems to relate to state of war. Offensive when the AI has decided to attack, defensive when being under attack, neutral most of the time. Assault and Massing I'm not sure about - what would these mean?
Also, I like the new city governor. This has taken a lot of microing off my hands - I can let the build governors handle the minor cities knowing that even if they might not develop the city the way I would, they will make it useful still. One gripe about that comes to mind though: they did not care about building jails even when I had WW up the wazoo and was running the slider high on culture. Those I had to force myself. In several cases, building Jail would've been worth as much happiness (or rather reduction of unhappiness) as all the happy-buildings they could build together.