A lobotomised rhesus monkey could have turned in a better performance than the English AI in my last game.
Depends. I've seen Austria dominate, when most times she is the one being dominated. Brazil for a culture victory, again only once have I seen Brazil kick ass culturally. The list goes on, most times the AI won't beat you but then on an odd occasion when the moon is full it will
Ha, so true - AI plays England terribly...and I think some folk judge England on the way the AI plays it.
Even the best performance I've seen by the AI only served to make England a mid-tabler. I was playing as China at the time and expecting a right duffing on the seas that just didn't materialise. The AI wiped out Spain with longbow army then just lost the plot.
In my case, England settled London, then decided to settle several more cities about 50 hexes away on the wrong side of Carthage, ignoring a vast expanse, groaning with resources, on their doorstep. Carthage (one of the stronger AIs) cleaned their clock in the first war, taking not just the offending cities but also London, and leaving the English AI with but one city on that continent, Newcastle. This, their new capital, was stuck permanently at size 1, being on a promontory with no resources and hemmed in on all landward sides by the territory dependent on London - with no prospect of any change, as they had seen fit to settle Newcastle at the minimum permitted distance from London.
Not content with this, they then tried to rebuild their position by settling a number of nuisance cities in ludicrous antarctic and arctic locations - including one, Warwick, on a small island ten hexes from Rome (my capital). Since I was the runaway in that game and their core area, such as it was, was almost literally as far away as it was possible to be on that map ON THE WRONG SIDE of Carthage, #2 and my ally, those bastards were just so many prisoners of war. Didn't stop them repeatedly denouncing and making insane extortion demands of me, though.
Best: Greece, Russia, Iroquis, Poland and Shoshone
Worst: China and America + the naval civs
Everyone knows Alex- If Russia or Iroquis are in a I know they are going to be monstrous runaways with 80% chance. Poland AI is very ambitious and deceptive and backed by powerful and easy UA. Shoshone, well, they are the easy mode.
China AI never seems to expand out of their initial city fast enough and they get left behind and eaten by a less passive neighbour. AI can't manage America no matter what and their lack of early game units probably makes this worse.
AI is so so bad with all the naval civs and overseas expansion so civs like England and Dutch are always hilariously bad in the games. Polynesian and Indonesian AIs breaks my heart.
Other civs are way less consistent. I've seen stuff like Songhai and Brazil as the runaways. Brazil conquered their own continent which they shared with Incas (heh, historical) and then made an overseas invasion and took out 1/4 of another. It was so bizarre and glorious. They were my number one competitor but I felt so proud for the AI for once.
I was using a 3UPT mod though and the AI seems more vigorous and capable with it. Probably affected things.
England also seems to "not know it's place" when it comes to Diplomacy. No matter what position it's in, it always seems to think it's the top player in the game.