[root_axis]

Totally disagree. Civ increases AI difficulty by gifting the AI free army units, resources and settlers. There are currently no 4x games where the AI can challenge an experienced player on even terms - the first game to do this (while also being a good game in and of itself) will be a massive success.

[ethbr0]

My impression was there was a lot of research and competent results in StarCraft AI.

And that was 10 or so years ago.

Which is more constrained than your average 4X, but not fundamentally different (resource + research + movement + combat).

[Jweb_Guru]

Not really. The AI was essentially "cheating" to play inhuman micro, its macro was apparently just as bad as typically expected.

[ethbr0]

I remember (from HN) some genetic algorithm explorations of optimal research/build orders that discovered novel and better combinations then-unknown to the playerbase.

[Jweb_Guru]

That might well be the case, but it didn't translate to realtime play AFAIK.

[Vespasian]

It would be a major breakthrough if the AI could plausible adapt to the human players.

Every one gets a challenge (or not if they chose so). We are probably not quite there yet.

[BlueTemplar]

Doesn't Galactic Civilizations 2 qualifies ? (Maybe for not particularly high values of "experienced".)