Like many, this surprised me.  I play on Challenging because that gives me the balance between "hard enough but not too hard."  Always considered myself a casual 4x player.

Many have asked, "Show me a better AI."  Civilization 5: Brave New World.  GC 3 isn't there yet (though I have hope it will be better than Civ 5 eventually).

I've already mentioned the AI problem with pirates.  (AI in Civ 5 deals well with even raging hordes of barbarians.)

Here's an AI behavior I don't understand: I far outclass my AI opponents in my current game. They have offered me several gifts.  Why?  I haven't threatened them or promised them protection or some other benefit.  AI gifts should be based on more than just simple fear.  I certainly don't do this as a human player.  I always have a reason for gifts.  If the AI is threatening, a gift might keep them from attacking until I have defenses in place.  Or, if an AI is at war with a more powerful AI that is hostile to me, I might give them tech and ships so they can survive.  Or, I supply the Drengin with ships because they will keep lots of other AIs busy fighting instead of researching and building up their worlds while I quietly build my empire and position it to win (I used this strategy A LOT in GC 2).  The gifts kept the Drengin attitude toward me friendly and didn't undermine my relations with other less warlike AIs.  (I always included a "hole" in ship defenses that was vulnerable to my ships in case they turned on me.)

The AI should have a purpose, a strategy, when they give a gift.  "I give you this gift so you won't attack me" would be something an AI would do if I threatened them or have fleets near their border.  "I give you this gift in the hope you will open your borders to me" is an example of a preemptive "this for that."  You know what they want.  Maybe they've offered open borders as a trade and you refused.  Or maybe, "We give you this gift and will send more if you ally with us."

How do you encourage an AI civ to go to war with another? I've tried bribing them but it seldom works.

Yeah can't wait for the patch. 

Sounds really silly, but I actually want to lose a game!

I actually can't comment on Civ5 much, I got it for free in some deal on Steam, tried to play it a couple of times but it was incredibly unstable on my system and crashed about every 10 minutes, also I wasn't having much fun with it in the bit of play time I could get between crashes so gave up.

Sorry.  Brave New World Expansion, not Age of Kings (It was actually Gods and Kings; This stuff tends to merge in my head as I get older). And yes, it has been an evolution in the Civilization series but people were asking to show a better AI, so I mentioned what is still the gold standard for 4x games. That said, I have high hopes for Brad and his team.

You also need to take CPU power into account, there are just so much CPU power you can give to the AI before people start complaining about turn times. If we all could accept five to ten minutes between turns then you could make AI pretty smart and more dynamic. We just have to wait for quantum computers and then you will get AI with nasty abilities that regularly beat even the brightest of human players...

In the future when quantum computer is a reality you will see games where you as the player act more like an administrator and each ship captain/admiral and governing body on planets have their own mind and psychological profiles. They perform whatever tasks you ask of them but you will not control everything to minute detail. You will even be able to have REAL fog of war with communication problem and lag in data-flow to you as the head of the government of your faction.

Now we talk real AI where you hardy know if the opponent is a human or AI automaton...

I've said this before Frogboy - if you fix the economy issues it will have a whole bunch of knock on effects that will make all the other problems seem less serious. As such, I'd drop what you are doing with the other stuff and fix this pronto!

Ie, lets imagine the AI does something really stupid with a colony ship - running it right up next to a pirate ship and getting it killed.

If it's economy is weak, it could take 5-10 turns to recover the population and produce a new colony ship to have another go.

If it's economy is strong, it only loses 1-2 turns.

Same deal with dumb military decisions. An AI with a ship decides to attack a star base.

if it's economy is poor, the AI tech level will suck and it wont manufacture big ships quickly - if it has them at all. So the chip it attacks with is likely to be tiny/small with small attack/Def numbers. The ship will die without doing significant damage. The decision will appear to be stupid.

on the other hand, if the AI has a strong economy with advanced tech, that same ship (for a given number of turns) might be large with reasonably high attack/Def. The star base will get creamed and the decision will appear to be smart.

Fixing the AI economy will go a long way!

First, completely agree that the AI will get better. I saw what you guys did with Gal Civ 2!

To your point, this is what I think is happening as I have watched the AI war with me:

If we think about "Warfare for Dummies in Gal Civ 3", you have 3 objectives

1) Take enemies' planets.

2) Kill Enemy starbases

3) Kill enemy fleets.

What it looks like is that the AI is heavily favoring strategy 3 right now. It will chase my fleets around, even bypassing starbases that it can take. Also, I rarely see the AI building transports and going after planets. Ultimately the AI's priority should be noted as above as a 1st level. There are obvious exceptions to that (don't kill a starbase that will cripple your fleet when their is a strong enemy fleet nearby), but as a 1st level pass I think it would make the AI more competitive.

Now when the AI does finally decide it wants to kill a starbase, I think it should always go for a kill shot. The soften strategy is not as effective in general, and often the fleet gets obliterated. My thinking is:

1) If I'm near an enemy starbase, engage it.

2) If I can kill it, kill it.

3) I can't do 2, switch priorities to other target.

4) If no good targets are in "sight", acquire greater fleet strength.

Once again, this is very crude, and there are a number of exceptions that will be worked out over time. But even this simple logic puts pressure on the player, if they don't react to the AI before its fleet builds up, starbases start to fall.

Lastly, for the initial release of GalCiv 3, I do think the AI should cheat at the highest levels, in a graduated way. I saw a similar technique used in a Civ 5 mod that I thought was useful, the AI was giving more bonuses gradually over the course of the game. This ensured the AI was competitive without overwhelming the player with an early death rush from the AI.

Now long term we all want an AI that doesn't cheat. But we aren't there yet, so for the 5% of us that want that ultimate challenge, I say put in the cheats for now and then scale them back as the AI gets smarter.

I keep seeing it.  In fact, he's goddam annoying at attacking my undefended planet, bypassing my fleets

I got the say the AI is much better now.  Still not to my liking, but better and more agressive.

there is one problem I would like to see fixed.

Let's say you build teams at the start of the game.  Ally with 1 AI races, put 1 other AI races as allies, leave the other independant.  As you explore the world, all your allies have shared vision.

Let's say I play Terran.  Allied with Altarians.  Drengi is allied with Yor, all others independant.

Drengi is close to Altarians.  Drengi is very war like and he hates me.  As the Altarians discover the Drengi, so do I.  First contact is so-so, a few turns later the Drengi declare war on me.

Problem is, we're playing on huge maps.  So the Drengi, he's in his little corner of space, I'm at the other end of the map.  He's trying really hard to get at me, but he can't reach me, and he probably won't be able to reach me until very late in the game.  And to reach me he would have to either cross a vast expanse of empty space or jump over 2-3 AI nations.  While trying to war with me, the Altarians will declare war on him, and the poor Drengi is fighting a war on two fronts, trying to outmatch me while his real ennemy is the Altarians very close by.  What eventually happens is that he gets slaughtered by the Altarians (or any other nearby race).  Meanwhile, the Yor, right next to me, will declare war on the Altarians they can not reach without going over the Krynn first (and conquering their planets to extend their range).  They build their economy for war, devote resources to building ships that won't really serve and when they advance in technology, they are unable to upgrade their ships because they are either strapped for cash or bankrupt or now they are at war with another neighbouring race wich has different weapons tech for wich they were prepared.

It is a common behaviour, as in, nearly every 4x game.

Before the AI declares war on another player, there should be some kind of check as to wether or not it can actually reach that race.  Simply being in contact or even being able to send a scout or survey ship over there is insufficient.  Starbases are a good way for the AI do extend its range (and that bastard will never frown upon it! ), but they require resources to upgrade (as in, constructors instead of military ships) because otherwise, any mid-range fleet will attack the starbase, destroy it, and cripple the AI's ability to wage war on the player.

The problems here with starbase is that AI rarely upgrades it's starbase to their full military potential.  Fair enough, I don't do it until later in the game either.  If the AI wants to attack me and needs starbases to reach me, it should prioritize upgrading and/or protecting these starbases that are necessary for its war.

Also, maybe the concept of white peace should be implemented.  If you don't attack each other for X turns, than peace is automatically granted after that time frame.  It would let the AI concentrate on its closests neighbours that it can conquer without a chain of starbases.

I believe this would make the AI much harder to beat.

yeah, he said that if we thought of something logical the AI should be doing, it's already there.  I must have missed that particular thing.

In one of the patch notes, it was said the AI was more focused on its traditional ennemy.  I think this is what is going on.  The Drengin probably hates the pragmatic or benevolent races more than others, so they declare war on them as soon as they see them and can attack (military research).