The only thing that keeps me from enjoying the original game is the lack of AI fog of war.
All barbarians rush breaking their legs to your capital. Obstacles can interfere with them, but more often on the plains three scouts visit you at once and a light show begins, especially fun with mounted archers and cavalry.
I watched the moment when a barbarian galley with 10% hp plundered my caravans for five turns, surrounded by galleys and quadriremes of state cities, a contractual game of collective AI against you.
If you send a scout or settler on a long journey, then in 90% of the final tile there will be an AI unit, either a homeless barbarian, or a state city unit, and its city will be quite far away. Even in your own territory, it is difficult with state city units, if you use a planned path that is higher than 1 or 2 tiles, before the Early Empire, they will always be on a rare resource square if you send a worker.
Barbarians are always waiting for you in unexpected places, more often a crossbow or a cannon, because for them there is no fog of war and they react precisely to your move with all their gathering. I especially like how the barbarian scouts are substituted to prevent you from attacking the camp while it is being attacked by a city-state or when your scout is pinched by a barbarian archer with a warrior, then the barbarian scout will definitely prevent you from dumping to a safe place and this is perhaps the only bright spot in AI, except for the fact that the AI is a cheater and reads the entire map.
Better not to plan a long way.
If you develop confidently in the game, then a camp of barbarians will definitely appear in the rear, or a damaged galley / privateer will sail from nowhere, as if they were kicked back just for you, as if they no longer have any points of interest except you!
The second point, the leaders will always settle in your direction, even when they don’t know anything about you and despite the fact that they have plenty of space in the rear and flanks. More often, the AI has a miracle of the world at hand, and if not, then the warrior purposefully runs with direct fire to the miracle that happened to be near you (3%), simply because you opened it and it is automatically read by the program.
