Comment by BlueTemplar

Galactic Civilizations 2 (also, 1,3,4 ??) in the same genre is well-known for its AI, good even without handicaps or cheats. This includes trading negotiations BTW.

(At least good compared to what other 4X have, and your average human player - not the top players that are the ones that tend to discuss the game online in the first place.)

EDIT : I suspect that it's not unrelated that GalCiv2 is kind of... boring as 4X go - as a result of a good AI having been a base requirement ?

Speaking of StarCraft AI... (for SC1, not 2, and predating AlphaZero by many years) :

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/01/skynet-meets-the-swar...