@anyone
Knowing the approximate state of the AI development so far, if you want a really good fight against the AI on monarch, suggest this:
1) Tectonics - pangaea. The AI is still very bad at transcontinental invasion but is putting up a reasonable fight on coastal harrassment and land war. Unfortunately the AI doesn't know how to properly use terrain advantages yet and so a human on tectonics gets a bit of an edge on Tectonics.
2) Tectonics pangaea large map - 15 civs. Seems to give a good balance between early warfare between minor civs and barbarians without crowding out too much. The other benefit is that it appears to me that the Tectonics bonus placement might be better balanced for corporate competition late game. The other "issue" is that if any human civ expands beyond say ten cities, the space race is too simple to win. This is because the more cities a human has, the more they can multitask space ship construction, something the AI is very bad at. With less than 10 cities, multitasking is less of an advantage.
3) "Start as minors" selected. A great little option invented by Jdog. The interesting thing here is that civs evolve from war into peace only through negotiations after writing. It seems to add some excellent regional relationships between civs.
4) No need for aggressive AI anymore! even if "Start as Minors" is not selected as a start option. This is because of "Better BTS AI" changes, civs now understand their proximity to other civs and get realistically stressed by border tensions between neighbours. Unfortunately as yet, the AI doesn't know how to start a war for the purposes of gaining specific resources from it's neighbours. If it achieves this, it is by accident only.
Cheers.