[raincole]

> The dirty secret is we think we want the AI to play more realistically, but actually don't.

The dirty secret is that we don't know if we want that. So far we don't have technology to make Civ AI play remotely like a reasonable human (at least not on a consumer grade PC). So we have absolute zero data point on how players will react to that.

[synu]

Also if this was actually true nobody would play multiplayer. And many people only play multiplayer because the AI is dumb.

[Aerroon]

I think evidence of this in the popularity of matchmaking systems. Players engaging in that aren't primarily looking for meaningful human interaction (they often mute the chat), but rather a human-skilled opponent.