One other thing I've seen the AI not do: Pick a "strategy". Usually it just goes about it's way, doing a "Build, Conquer, Culture, Diplo" thing, spreading everything about fairly equally without concentrating on a certain kind of victory(but there is some specialisation: militaristic civs tend to attack more. other than that, I haven't noticed much concentration)
One of the more difficult aspects of this would be giving the AI the chance to "choose its fate" by itself, i.e. analysing the current situation and deciding on which would bring about the best victory, and as an added effect, do it in the way the typical civ player would: what gets the highest score. A few things that would need to be changed before a "targeted" AI could be programmed:
-Before Intelligence Agency, a civ would be informed if a city was investigated. By putting a spy in the civ, there would still be a 10% chance of "informing" the civ that they have been investigated. This would help the human player tell if the AI is checking up on culture or whatever.
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Now, the AI should wait until it knows all the civs, and a certain date afterwards, before "deciding" on a victory target, and it should have a backup plan in place in case it doesn't work. If the AI is fairly ahead in tech, it might go after a space race victory. If it's got a whopping military, conquest or domination should be the goal. If it's got a lot of wonders, or the scientific/religious traits, Culture should be an option(20k for wonders, 100k for traits) And it should try to go for Diplo once in a while, if it's not scoring high enough in the other categories. And if it does try for diplo, it should take on the same goals that a human player going for diplo would: Keep at peace if necessary, but if war comes about, well, "Dead people can't vote".
And, if it seems to be coming up even on things(i.e. high culture + big military), the ol' coin flip should go on: just randomly pick out of the best options.
Now, once it's chosen a specialisation, it should work towards that goal:
Culture 20k: Research culture-giving techs first, i.e. Education, Literature, Monotheism, Construction. Then as soon as the techs are completed, get to work building those buildings.
Culture 100k: Wonder-giving techs are the goal here, get to 'em first and on higher levels, perhaps a prebuild.
With both culture victories, gov't should be Demo or Republic. If a religious civ, perhaps swapping Monarchy in during wartime.
Conquest: Military techs, military strength, strong economy for upgrades, Leo's workshop if it can get it. Workers to connect resources, targeted wars to get unavailable resources/lux's, big-time warfare other times, and investigating cities before the battles begin to scout-out the border cities.
Domination: Same thing as conquest, except keeping more cities and building the lowest-cost culture building in captured cities to grow territory.
For Conquest/Domination, Communism or Monarchy should be the Gov't of choice.
Space Race: Put lotsa money into techs to get a huge lead, build Libraries/Universties/Research Labs everywhere and target Science-increasing wonders and try to get a lot of them in one city, especially if that city has the colossus(for the early game). Then, a prebuild for Apollo if it's a higher difficulty level(monarch or higher) and perhaps a few prebuilds for other spaceship parts right before the appropriate techs get researched. Small wars to gain aluminum/uranium, but NO RESOURCE CHEATING, i.e. it wouldn't go to war over the resources until they became available. Gov't would be Rep/Demo.
And finally, Diplo. This is kind of the "catch-all" category when it doesn't think it can pull up any other victory, or if its desired victory is impossible/largely impractical. A few major changes for this:
-THE AI WOULD GIVE GIFTS. To raise its status, of course. And not just to the human player(s), but also to other AIs.
-The "Dead man can't vote" approach to war.
Gov't would suit whatever current strategy it's using.
And if it can't get ANY of those victories realistically, the ol' histograph. Try to survive to 2050, build up happy citizens and territory, future tech if it gets that far(although impact would be minimum, it does bring the score up some)
Well, that's my thoughts for today. Gotta let the keyboard cool off for a while now.
