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While waiting for Warlords, I tried an experimental game; an OCC game on a large Highlands map with raging barbs. 
(Marathon mode, Noble difficulty)
The idea there was that with the AI being occupied by the barbs, restricting their expansion and research, perhaps with intelligent defense against the barbs I could survive and even have a chance at achieving space race victory.
What happened was that the AI controlled civs kept being eliminated by the barbs one by one - at Noble the AI wasn't equiped to handle the barb attacks.
Now, in Warlords, I tried another raging barbs game, with the same settings except not an OCC game this time. Now it seems that the AI can hold it's own against the barbs - no-one has been eliminated (by barbs - Monty got eliminated by me! ). Gandhi came closest to dying, but then again, his starting location was pretty bad. Oh, and this time I also reducced the number of opponents by two, just to help the barbs out a bit.... 
So can we conclude that the AI has been improved significantly in the expansion? Or do they simply gain more advantages against the barbs with the expansion?
By the way, with the Great Wall in the game, raging barbs on large highlands is actually ridiculously easy (and somewhat boring)... that is, if you get the great wall of course.
(Marathon mode, Noble difficulty)The idea there was that with the AI being occupied by the barbs, restricting their expansion and research, perhaps with intelligent defense against the barbs I could survive and even have a chance at achieving space race victory.
What happened was that the AI controlled civs kept being eliminated by the barbs one by one - at Noble the AI wasn't equiped to handle the barb attacks.
Now, in Warlords, I tried another raging barbs game, with the same settings except not an OCC game this time. Now it seems that the AI can hold it's own against the barbs - no-one has been eliminated (by barbs - Monty got eliminated by me!
). Gandhi came closest to dying, but then again, his starting location was pretty bad. Oh, and this time I also reducced the number of opponents by two, just to help the barbs out a bit.... So can we conclude that the AI has been improved significantly in the expansion? Or do they simply gain more advantages against the barbs with the expansion?
By the way, with the Great Wall in the game, raging barbs on large highlands is actually ridiculously easy (and somewhat boring)... that is, if you get the great wall of course.