Too strong or too weak?

[klopolov]

After beating the game on warlord (played C3 for about a week), I switched to regent. I'm playing a second game on regent now, and it seems to me that there is a great variation on how strong the AIs are. The first game I played, I was on the small-mid size continent with the English who did not have iron. By the time I was half way done with them, Greeks and Japanese found us (they were on another mid size continent fairly close to us). Both Greeks and Japanese were far more advanced than me and soon gave English some iron and formed an alliance with them against me. That did not look good, and they eventually pushed me back into my territory and from there on I was on the defensive with no way out of war and no way to catch up to the AI in tech. But in the game I'm playing now, I was on the large continent with the French and the English, who formed an alliance against me (was tough at first, I was in between them), but after a while, I drove off the French, razed two of their cities and made peace for all their goodies and an alliance against English. Fairly soon, I reigned supreme on the whole continent and the French and English were no more. But when I found everybody else (Americans, Chinese, Romans, Japanese and Indians) they were sharing another large continent and I was more powerful and advanced than most of them put together!
My playing did not get that much better, why all of a sudden the AIs were so much weaker? is how well each AI is going to play random? Or is there some other more logical explanation?

 

[rysingsun]

i think there is a lot of (sometimes good sometimes bad) luck in it all. there is nothing that will beat a good starting location for example. if you start in a high food region you will expand far more quickly than if you start in a very poor food region. it also matters a lot how close you start to your neighbors. and it matters how many trading partners you can find early in the game. and these things are not always very controllable. early wars matter too. suppose there are two main continents with 4 civs on each. on one they all get along peacefully. on the other they get embroiled in an early war that stalemates and accomplishes little for any of them but to slow down their economic progress. and which of these two continents do YOU start on? it could be either one.

 

[Chieftess]

The AI builds and researches at the same rate you do. What it doesn't do is micromanage tiles correctly. (i.e., irragates and mines where it shouldn't). That's your advantage up through Monarch, and maybe even emperor.