Thought I'd post some of my collected AI gripes here.
1. Your advisors give you the same advice no matter the situation in many cases (e.g. domestic advisor will always tell you [City Name] is growing slowly, even if it's size 28 and growing another point every two turns, science advisor always says you need to increase science funding to keep up even when you're multiple eras ahead and making advances at the maximum possible rate).
2. Evaluations of military strength are based solely on number of units - apparently a Settler counts just as much as a Battleship. This can be somewhat annoying, because in order to keep the AIs from deciding to attack you, you have to spend almost all of your time building units - even if you have a gargantuan tech advantage. At one point the English had a numerical advantage over me of about 4 to 3, but 75% of their troops were Spearmen and Swordsmen (most of the rest being Men-o-War), while mine were Modern Armor, Mechanized Infantry, Battleships, Bombers, etc. It was kind of funny when they attacked me - I wasn't interested in conquering them, so I didn't take any of their cities, but my bombers were blowing their countryside to kingdom come while my battleship fleet was sinking a dozen or so Men-o-War a turn.
3. Score is based almost entirely on territory.
4. The computer doesn't care in the least if you have nukes - in the game I just finished, I did and nobody else was better than just starting the Industrial age. Half the world declared war on me, so I built a bunch of nukes - and they didn't care. Even after I plastered all of England into a glowing radioactive desert (with a bunch of nukes left over), they still wouldn't make peace or even acknowledge my envoys. As a matter of fact, as soon as I fired my first demonstration nuke, the OTHER half of the world declared war on me.
5. The computer values its cities way too highly, making the "trade cities" option worthless. At one point I offered the Germans (who loved me) four techs, 3000 gold, 500 gold per turn, fur, spices, gems, and 20 size 20+, highly developed cities for one size-1 city off in the middle of nowhere (happened to be sitting on Uranium, but they didn't know that) and they still wouldn't take the deal.
6. Related to the previous one, what is it the computer has against a fair deal? I could NEVER get them to accept a trade of luxury for luxury, even when they really loved me and half their cities had 5-6 entertainers to keep order (so they SHOULD have been really anxious to get luxuries). I'd always have to give them a few hundred gold or some tech as well.
7. There's entirely too much (IMO) "everybody hate the human" in the AI. #6 may be related to that, but the most egregious example I had was during voting for Secretary-General. The candidates were me and the English. I'd been really friendly with the Russians for milennia, lots of trade, mutual protection pacts, occasional gifts of tech, and so on. They were "Gracious" towards me, and in the middle of a centuries-long war with the English. So guess who they voted for? Elizabeth, of course. I really don't see how you could ever get a Diplomatic victory, since all the AIs liked me and were usually at war with the English, but they ALL voted for her (Russia just being the most surprising).
The AI generally plays a much harder game than in 2 or SMAC, but in some ways it's a lot worse...
1. Your advisors give you the same advice no matter the situation in many cases (e.g. domestic advisor will always tell you [City Name] is growing slowly, even if it's size 28 and growing another point every two turns, science advisor always says you need to increase science funding to keep up even when you're multiple eras ahead and making advances at the maximum possible rate).
2. Evaluations of military strength are based solely on number of units - apparently a Settler counts just as much as a Battleship. This can be somewhat annoying, because in order to keep the AIs from deciding to attack you, you have to spend almost all of your time building units - even if you have a gargantuan tech advantage. At one point the English had a numerical advantage over me of about 4 to 3, but 75% of their troops were Spearmen and Swordsmen (most of the rest being Men-o-War), while mine were Modern Armor, Mechanized Infantry, Battleships, Bombers, etc. It was kind of funny when they attacked me - I wasn't interested in conquering them, so I didn't take any of their cities, but my bombers were blowing their countryside to kingdom come while my battleship fleet was sinking a dozen or so Men-o-War a turn.
3. Score is based almost entirely on territory.
4. The computer doesn't care in the least if you have nukes - in the game I just finished, I did and nobody else was better than just starting the Industrial age. Half the world declared war on me, so I built a bunch of nukes - and they didn't care. Even after I plastered all of England into a glowing radioactive desert (with a bunch of nukes left over), they still wouldn't make peace or even acknowledge my envoys. As a matter of fact, as soon as I fired my first demonstration nuke, the OTHER half of the world declared war on me.
5. The computer values its cities way too highly, making the "trade cities" option worthless. At one point I offered the Germans (who loved me) four techs, 3000 gold, 500 gold per turn, fur, spices, gems, and 20 size 20+, highly developed cities for one size-1 city off in the middle of nowhere (happened to be sitting on Uranium, but they didn't know that) and they still wouldn't take the deal.
6. Related to the previous one, what is it the computer has against a fair deal? I could NEVER get them to accept a trade of luxury for luxury, even when they really loved me and half their cities had 5-6 entertainers to keep order (so they SHOULD have been really anxious to get luxuries). I'd always have to give them a few hundred gold or some tech as well.
7. There's entirely too much (IMO) "everybody hate the human" in the AI. #6 may be related to that, but the most egregious example I had was during voting for Secretary-General. The candidates were me and the English. I'd been really friendly with the Russians for milennia, lots of trade, mutual protection pacts, occasional gifts of tech, and so on. They were "Gracious" towards me, and in the middle of a centuries-long war with the English. So guess who they voted for? Elizabeth, of course. I really don't see how you could ever get a Diplomatic victory, since all the AIs liked me and were usually at war with the English, but they ALL voted for her (Russia just being the most surprising).
The AI generally plays a much harder game than in 2 or SMAC, but in some ways it's a lot worse...
and the Zulu gave me Theology for Silk. Since this put me on equal footing with the Science leaders again, I'd call that a pretty good trade 
