Biggest weakness in every civ game is the shitty AI that requires massive cheating, and terrible diplomacy (constantly making ridiculous demands, then getting mad and denouncing you if you dont hand over the goods)
Seriously. I remember first getting into Deity and realizing it's basically just exploiting intimate knowledge of how the AI works. The actual max difficulty is Prince, where the AI doesn't get bonuses, and it's so terrible at actually pursuing an agenda it's not very challenging.
I am a bit hopeful that VII's decoupling leaders and civs will force the AI to be a bit more generally good. At least make it so you don't know exactly what sort of tactics to use from the first turn you meet it.
The gameplay stretching out in later rounds is also what makes the AI so hard to improve. There is just too much to do and the effects are too complex to understand for a classic game AI. If they simplify the gameplay with the player progression into later ages it will also make the development of a competent AI more likely.
But to be honest: I doubt anything like that is going to happen. Even when controlling a planet wide empire I will have to decide what every city is going to do next and what every unit is going to do in the next turn...
Well thats kind of the point of my statement about "it's 2024"
I understand game AI is a complex problem. But it seems like we havent made any progress since civ3.... And we're right in the middle of an AI hype cycle... Can we not use AI for something useful like games? Instead of just making deepfakes, disinformation, and firing workers?
I'm pretty sure you could train an AI to play a game like Civ, but the problem stays the same. As everything progresses to get more complicated and you have to decide even more every turn it gets harder and harder to train. The results are kind of unpredictable and you might have to train your AI again with every patch. It will limit the systems your game can run on (even excluding some platforms) and heavily impact performance on the systems it can run on.