What difficulty level do you typically find challenging for previous versions of Civilization?

That's a bewildering litmus test. You think they could be designing a civilization game where a player can't beat the AI within their first five games? You think that could be one of the design goals for this game, and you would call that "competent AI"?

@marvingardens this is the standard for what I would describe as "competent"; I do not expect they are going to, or intend to, design an AI that meets this criteria, but maybe I will be surprised.

Previews have this game coming out in early February, so I've adjusted the close date