OT - Strategy games with GOOD AI

[SlipperyJim]

Originally Posted by LDiCesare

Strange. With aggressive ai on, which should always be the case, the ai is somewhat aggressive. Not as much as a human, but it will strike early if it feels its neighbour is weak, akthough it depends a lot on the personality (Gandhi will hardly ever attack for instance).

Agreed. Here's a checklist for good AI in Civ4:

1. Are you playing Beyond the Sword?
2. Have you installed the 3.19 patch, which includes some AI improvements?
3. Have you enabled Aggressive AI?

Please note that Aggressive AI is sort of a double-edged sword. It encourages the AIs to build more troops, which definitely gives them a better chance against bloodthirsty humans. On the other hand, all of those troops can cause the AIs to fall behind in other areas, especially tech. A dedicated science fiend could have an advantage over Aggressive AI by simply out-teching the AI until he can send Riflemen against Longbowmen.

Off-topic a bit, but if you enjoy Civ4:BtS, then you should definitely try the BUG or BAT mods:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=268

BUG stands for "Beyond the Sword Unaltered Gameplay". It doesn't add new nations, units, techs, or other content. Instead, BUG improves the user interface. It includes a lot of great alerts to minimize the micromanagement. BUG also serves up a lot of information to the player. Civ4 will show you all of this information by default, but you usually have to go clicking through half-a-dozen screens every turn in order to find it. BUG saves you the work.

BAT is simply BUG with a number of graphical enhancements. It makes a pretty game look even prettier.