Weak AI when playing online

[elmenhorster]

after playing tons of multiplayer games online i noticed AI is much weaker lets say 2humans and 5AIs...don't build much cities like 4-8 is ok for them, very very rarely switch to republic, behind in tech, they stop advancing, they just hang there, researching ancient tech in 17th century....
when i play single game they are much more active expanding and signing alliances against me...
so what's the problem, how to make AI superior online?

 

[Peaster]

Multi-players don't seem to lurk around here much, so I'll give this try.

First, in the PBEMs I've played, there were almost no AIs involved, so I can't quite relate. But in those games, the humans tended to form alliances, and cooperate by trading techs, etc. If there HAD been AIs in our games, they would've been left far behind.

If you really want strong AI civs in your games, you could create a scenario in which the AIs start out way ahead. It is easy to do, but if you have never made one, you could agree that the humans have to "pass" for the first 20 turns of your game, for example.