v83 Considerations (AI Conquering and Europe)

[mackpo21]

Apologies for the late post of this after the release of v84. I played several games up to the Industrial era on v83 with different Mediterranean civs. I've included some thoughts below.
Rome:

• The AI as Rome as a particularly difficult time conquering territory and more often than not seems to get completely overrun by the huns when they pass through.
• With a human player playing Rome they can typically settle more cities and survive the Huns a little better - even when I switched into observer mode before the Huns spawn. Rome losing a couple cities versus being completely wiped out has a big impact on how Spain and France develop - they seem to get really weak if they have no cities to build off of
• Maybe having larger number of Celtia units spawn and conquer Roman cities would help with this? the issue with the Huns is that they destroy everything in front of them
• Also, I never saw Rome conquer or settle much Eastern territory, this really cripples Eastern Rome when they spawn and they almost always get destroyed by the Huns. Having Byzantium as a city state in v84 might help with this, but I think more could be done to help Eastern Rome protect itself. Maybe increasing the defensiveness of Byzantium with an early Castle, more units or something of the like.

Arabia:

• Probably my most fun playthrough was as Arabia, trying to push as far as possible into Europe through Iberia. The unit spawning is dynamic, helpful and creates a realistic human playthrough
• The AI as Arabia is pretty lost and weak. After observing some games it seems like the main problem - which happens to the AI in general, is the lack of melee units to capture cities. In my playthrough I would build horsemen to help with city conquering, maybe have some horsemen spawn with the camel archers? The AI is not really smart enough to build them

General:

• The AI is really lost by the time colonization rolls around. Part of this seems to be because the AI just doesn't want to build settlers and most of the new world goes uncolonized. Also part of this seems to be from the Vikings crippling England in most games
• Persia in general seems too weak, they often did not get past Babylon even when it was as city state in my games. I think a potential solution would be to start them with more units. They do usually survive though and are an interesting civ in the mid east, they just are not a threat in the early game

Will post more thoughts after some playthroughs with v84