Suddenly totally incompetent AI?

[dogwalksyou]

Recently I started experimenting with changing some features, notably map size. As I encountered some of the other civilizations later into the game (after discovery of Astronomy), I noticed something odd...they all seemed to be incredibly unadvanced! By the time I was exploring other continents I had roughly 1250 in score while my opponents ranged from 275 to 750 - and some of these had not even discovered techs such as Aesthetics (and numerous others at that level of discovery) when I had reached Communism and Steam Power. I had never before encountered such a situation, and I suspect that some of my changes - or a combination of them - may be involved with some sort of known issue with the AI. I'm hoping somebody on this forum might be familiar with this scenario.

This is a comparison of the Custom Game option changes between before and after (I label the changes I made):

Map: Custom Continents (I increased the number of continents to 5, from the previous 3)
Size: Huge (I changed the grid size to 41x30 (or 164x120 spaces) from the default of 32x20 in the file CIV4WorldInfo.xml)
Climate: Temperate
Sea Level: Low
Era: Ancient
Speed: Marathon
World Wrap: Toroidal (it was previously Cylindrical)
Resources: Standard

Special Options: I previously had "Random Personalities" and "New Random Seed on Reload" enabled, and now added "Unrestricted Leaders"

Victory Conditions: I previously had Conquest, Domination, and Cultural enabled, and now disabled Cultural

AI Opponents: I previously played with 7 AI opponents, and now increased that number to 10. The rest of the conditions remained constant (enemy civs/leaders were randomized, all civs were on separate teams)

My Leader: Huayna Capac
My Civilization: I previously played straight Incan, but now experimenting with Unrestricted Leaders I have tried one game playing as Holy Rome and one game playing as America
My Difficulty: Prince

 

[Archon_Wing]

Custom Continents does some wonky stuff and sometimes gives god awful starts to people. If they hate each other they'll be really slow.

My best guess is you have not enough players on this map. 10 players is fine for large, but for huge it gets really sparse. Try 14-15; tech pace will be better with more trades happening. Also with 5 landmasses, that means that people only had one partner on their landmass, meaning they just won't want to trade because they fear giving up monopolies (AI is stupid in that regard) Also,they have massive barb trouble due to the large empty spaces.

 

[dogwalksyou]

I know what you mean about the starts - I've seen civs get their capitol city in ~30-70 squares of fertile land surrounded by ocean and tundra.

So then, you're saying that it might help to increase the number of AI opponents. Before I edited the size of Huge maps I would play with 7 or 8 AI opponents most of the time, but that didn't seem to cause a lot of issues. However, I did nearly double the total size of the map (10240 spaces -> 19680) and then only increased the number of AI opponents by less than half their previous number...

Okay, so I'll try making a game with, say, 15 AI nations. When I get Astronomy (or if they do first) and start making acquaintances I'll post the results. Thanks for the suggestion =)

Any other hypotheses regarding what the issue might have been caused by? I personally suspected that Unrestricted Leaders might have had an impact; I figured that the AI would want people like Gandhi and civs like the Carthaginians to do different things, and when the AI is controlling Gandhi of the Carthaginians it gets confused or something...

 

[Lone Wolf]

I personally suspected that Unrestricted Leaders might have had an impact; I figured that the AI would want people like Gandhi and civs like the Carthaginians to do different things, and when the AI is controlling Gandhi of the Carthaginians it gets confused or something...

Nope, Unrestricted Leaders games work fine. I guess if you rolled several Tokugawas...

 

[Saru]

Nope, Unrestricted Leaders games work fine. I guess if you rolled several Tokugawas...

This might be the case.
The AI's might have started massive wars right from the start which crippled their development and then barbarian hordes from numerous steppes started rolling on them crippling them down even more.
I guess the best way to know is to retire and see the replay of the game that you are given.

 

[dogwalksyou]

I've reached 1650 AD (turn 720) in my new file, and the results are even more drastic than previously. The changes I made were to play with 15 AI civs (plus my own, totalling 16 civs), re-enable Cultural victories, and disable Unrestricted Leaders. I'm still playing as Huayna Capac on Prince, and all the other details are unchanged. I'm surprised at the results. Although I typically manage to found numerous religions and excel at culture, other than that the results are atypical for me.

Current Scores (The reason why there are 15 civs here is that I eliminated the two that started on my continent early on with a Quechua rush, and that Louis XIV is Bismarck's overseas colony):
Me (Huayna Capac): 2635
Isabella: 1055
Saladin: 972
Catherine: 964
Justinian I: 963
Ramesses II: 954
Suryavarman II: 953
Pacal II: 756
Mansa Musa: 715
Sitting Bull: 668
Genghis Khan: 625
Zara Yaqob: 573
Willem van Oranje: 526
Bismarck: 488
Louis XIV: 359

In more detail, I have the most population, the most land area, the most culture, the strongest military, and the most advanced technology by far. I founded 5 of the 7 religions, and every world wonder built so far has been built by me (sans the two shrine wonders for the religions I didn't found). All technologies so far discovered that give a great person for getting first, as well as Liberalism, were discovered first by me. Most enemy civs like me and I have a defensive pact with Isabella and Ramesses II, and I am beating every other civ in espionage.

This has never before happened to me, and I doubt it is entirely due to my own choices. If I can't find a solution, I'm going to start giving myself handicaps, or try a higher difficulty level (maybe Emperor). I do find this quite funny though. I suppose I'll try Saru's suggestion and see what they are doing in the beginning of the game...