Random, runaway AI getting ridiculous.

[wurstburst]

Prince, Sparse resources too which makes it all the more pointless to spam cities everywhere.

Go up two levels to Emperor to give the AI some more advantages and you'll find that they won't be as easy to tackle militarily. Much less of a pushover. Also, by setting sparse resources, you further hobble the AI by making their city spam less effective. Turn that setting back to default - you are making it even harder for the AI.

At prince level, you are asking the AI to fight an even fight with you. Computers aren't at that level yet to beat a human in a fair fight in an open strategy game like this (they can do it at a game like chess which is very easy to quantify and crunch, but not a game with as many variables as this). You need to up the difficulty level a bit.

 

[Zenstrive]

Prince is the most enjoyable for me, King is when I want a challenge, Emperor I have never tried.

 

[vihta]

I'm no expert by any means but anything below Immortal is ridiculously easy imo.

 

[Cordycep]

I don't know how the Ai ignores the happiness penalties that comes with spamming cities. Often, I see those civs surging up the tech tree to the point where they are way ahead of everybody else. I've tried to secure good territory, but this always leads to war; not just with one civ, but usually two. If you saw no military units, consider yourself lucky. In the last few games, the runaway AI has managed to build up a sizeable force of advanced soldiers. In the last two, the run away civs declared war on me and I found myself fighting a superior army both in numbers and equpiment with a backwards army.

In the last game, Germany turned out to be the runaway civ that declared war on my from across the map for no apparent reason. Even after ripping out what I thought to be the heart and soul of Germany, Berlin, Munich and Essen (plus other smaller cities), Bismarck continued to advance up the tech tree and spam out cities without pause. I still have no idea how he managed to save enough money to pay off around seven city states to declare war on me either. In the end, I was only able to conquer one more city, the others being defended by advanced units that obliterate my feeble troops the moment they walk within range.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

This has been a problem for years and years, and it is generated by the AI "flavors" that civ V supposedly doesn't have. If all of the AI at least attempted to win, we wouldn't have to put up with this. The player base is highly polarized on this issue though, and so we continue to get shoddy between AIs.

 

[iggymnrr]

Prince is the most enjoyable for me, King is when I want a challenge, Emperor I have never tried.

I've played on all these levels. More often than not prince AI field horsemen sooner, sometimes turn 70. I have also seen emperor AI defend with spear and settlers at turn 200 while having 8 cities too. I can understand no metal or horse but no civil service or xbows by turn 200 is ridiculous.