By whom? And have they tried to go to development source of the games and what they intended?
Again, Soren Johnson, who designed civ III's AI, gave his talk with the tile
Playing to Lose, and he was in part, referring to civ III AI. He also distinguished between "good AI" and "fun AI". In that talk, from about 24:00 to 27:00 he says things like:
"We want the player to feel like they are playing against seven distinct personalities, not seven optimal AIs".
His notes say:
"We want players to win, or at least, understand why they lost."
He says:
"And you know, it's o.k. for the AI to fall for certain types of traps."
And more along those lines, emphasizing that they want the human player to win, with the ideal situation that they always win on the last few turns of the game (that's for everyone who plays the game... not just the veterans also).
??? One can only get a military great leader in the classic game by an elite defeating a unit with defense value. Leader fishing on AI artillery is impossible.
Artillery getting dropped off next to my coastal capital in 20k games means later leader fishing. Later leader fishing means that the Heroic Epic isn't available as early. And there would be no benefit of the artillery being there with artillery as not being able to get captured.
Your mod combined with Flintlock's version sounds strictly like a nerf. It doesn't sound balanced at all to me overall, because I think it would mean more people losing in situations where they wouldn't have a high level understanding why they lost or what they could have done differently to win. Can you explain how your mod would either make it more likely that people would win more often, or how they would have a high level understanding in more cases of why they lost?
??? Where did I assert that? I don't think that AIs are abuse-able in the first place.