AI behavior in MP is noticeably crippled

[PTM]

I've mentioned this myself in various other threads just as I've seen it mentioned by others. Because it is now becoming increasingly clear to me that this isn't merely anecdotal but is, in fact, an actual and intentional design decision, I felt it deserved its own thread. I'm noticing a pattern, and I don't like it.

The AI in multiplayer is intentionally crippled.

AI in multiplayer will not:
+ Initiate deals with human players of any kind.
+ Initiate deals with one another outside of the very rare research agreement.
+ Contact human players with respect to troop placement, military strength, city-state alliances, etc. Indeed, the AI will never contact human players under any circumstances.
+ Aggressively initiate, or successfully handle, warring (to be fair, singleplayer AI is bad at this too, albeit noticeably "less" bad than MP AI). Particularly true with respect to AI v. human or AI v. AI warfare. Less true of AI v. City-State warfare.

And, of course, there are no leaderheads.

It seems that multiplayer AIs have been, by design, relegated to the role of placeholders. They keep the seat warm for humans, focusing on wonder-spamming and infrastructure rather than conquest and game-winning. I am not disputing the merits of this design - it keeps things moving quickly for PvPers. But for those of us who play with AIs regularly in addition to friends, I implore you:

Please let the host toggle this "placeholder AI" behavior off so that we can actually, you know, add some of the immersion and intelligence back into the multiplayer AI.

 

[eliminat]

As someone whose friends will play Civ multi-player for the single purpose of Humans vs AI this is severely disappointing.

 

[turingmachine]

Does anyone have an account at the official forums so they can post these complaints there? I'm not at my home computer so I can't do it at the moment, but that seems like the best place to be heard in terms of fixing multiplayer (crippled AI, options to turn on unit animations, leaderheads, save the game anytime we want, have notifications when we meet a civ/city-state find a national wonder, what we get from ruins, etc. etc.)

Edit:

Nevermind, I see someone already did.

 

[AnkZ]

I totally agree with PTM.

 

[DavidicusH]

I have also been vocal about this in several other related threads. A toggle must be integrated into the settings to disable this strange AI behavior.