Huge map Marathon speed and terrible AI

[deepace]

I have always played Civ 4 vanilla on a standard size map at normal speed and Noble difficulty.After reading some posts,I decided to try Huge map with Marathon speed and left the difficulty setting at Noble.
I realised very quickly that I loved these new settings it's like a new game except for one thing.The AI is ridiculous.I don't see how the other settings can have any affect on AI but whilst it always seemed quite good on standard/normal it's stupid on Huge/Marathon.So far I've wiped out Catherine.Isobella then declared war and proceeded to attack my spearmen and axemen every few turns with a single chariot.Then Frederick declared war on me so I captured two of his large cities defended by only two archers,then he came crashing through the jungle to attack my stack of catapults and axemen with his single chariot.
I really can't see how size and speed can have any affect on how smart the AI is and I don't see how changing from Noble to Prince or higher will help improve it,it would probably just make less resources etc available.
Terry

 

[LegionSteve]

Marathon speed affects the AI because it makes units cost x2 but everything else cost x3 to build. This makes warfare stronger compared to other strategies. This affects the AI for 2 reasons: 1) it doesn't seems to know about this change in the balance of the game, and 2) the AI is generally rubbish at war anyway.

Unfortunately in vanilla I don't think there is much you can do about it. I never used to play marathon until I got BtS. With BtS, 1) can be fixed to some extent by selecting the 'Aggressive AI' option in custom game. This basically tells the AI to build more units (in vanilla, if I remember correctly, this option was ******ed - it just made all the AIs hate the human player). 2) can be fixed, to some extent, by using the BtS Better AI mod.

 

[deepace]

Thanks for your reply Legionsteve.I do have BTS so will give it a try.
Terry