That's a very good point as well. Again, I think the point is not about making the AI human-like (ie play to win), but making it competent. Firaxis seems unwill

That's a very good point as well. Again, I think the point is not about making the AI human-like (ie play to win), but making it competent. Firaxis seems unwilling or incapable of making the AI competent. We could argue that making a competent AI is difficult - it is! But then a competent game designer comes up with mechanics that the AI can handle. A well designed game is put together knowing the capabilities of each game component so that they work together, not against each other. This is I feel the source of brilliance of CIV 4. It was a game running on vastly less powerful machines than what we have today, and yet the AI felt vastly more competent. It is likely actually less "smart" than the AI in CIV 7 in absolute terms, but it was operating in a world which it understood and could reason about much better. It's an issue with a lot of modern games. People have starry ideas about fancy features, but then they can't integrate the features together into a cohesive whole. I think this is something we lost in the modern days of game development. It has never been easier and more accessible, but this accessibility (which I support wholeheartedly), has made it easy for people to design themselves into a corner.