I prefer other games for MP (such as Dominions IV). What little MP Civ I played was a pain to setup, and generally having to be connected at the same time as other people is too much of a constraint for me to enjoy it.If you're not liking the AI, play it in multiplayer with friends like I do and you'll have a lot of fun, unless one of your friends takes 5 minutes to decide where to move, but you have turn timers for that
I think Civ VI is probably a good MP game in its genre, though, but only for those who can manage to setup MP games. For me it's too long (can't reliably play one game through one sitting) and it's not paced well enough for pbem either.