4X Old World - historical 4X strategy by Civ 4 designer (formerly 10 Crowns)

[Desiderius]

Sounds like high praise. I still play CivIV multiplayer with a couple of friends against Immortal/Deity AI. And even after decades of playing it's still a challenge (alcohol might be a factor here). All the other 4X games we tried over the years had absolutely garbage AI, that's why I asked.

Old World does other things to make the AI better too. They start out more advanced than you, with more cities, and they always play on The Good, so they'll have more starting resources and orders than you if you play on a higher difficulty. On top of that, you can't realistically avoid conflict in this game, so you can't ignore warfare and training units. The AI also gets updated constantly by the devs.

That depends on difficulty. Fair to say the AI is better at exploiting those advantages than they are in other games, and it’s pretty darn good even from an even start. Knows how to take advantage of the strengths of each civ.