This note is an academic quibble with the notion that we are being fair to the poor AI in the AU mod. We are not
IMO.
I approve overwhelmingly of the changes in the AU mod. However, I believe the idea that the mod has evened the playing field for the AI, even a little, is not correct. The new mod empowers the human player, particularly the warmonger. In short, me. That's why I like it.
My case rests on the SS build. In the basic game, while the human player is pounding his or her way to domination, a single civ, often separated by geography, can manage to research to the SS. This presents, as we all know, a critical time requirement for domination and strategic tradeoffs about the type of win to aim for. Go to slow and get stuck out of democracy and you might fail to achieve domination, not because any civ defeats you but because the SS clock runs out.
With the new SS requirements in the mod, the time to achieve domination has been materially lengthened. This reduced risks for the warmonger, especially on higher levels. Moreover, the improvement of the modern era wonders, which humans are more likely to get, further tilts the playing field in the human direction. I bet winning percentages go up visibly on deity and that emperor, like monarch used to be, will now approach 100% wins (if you survive the bad starts) for many of the players that post on these boards.
This is emphatically not a whine. I will likely use the new mod almost exclusively. Great work was done and many of the changes do make the AI more competitive. This is sort of like the old Roman games, however. The Christians may be a bit better armed, but we know who's going to get eaten.
