Advice for cooperative games against AI?

[lange17]

I'm getting two friends who are relatively new to Civ to play some multiplayer with me. We tend to interact better as teammates than as opponents, so my idea is to play as teammates, communicating/trading freely once we find each other on the map, and playing at a higher difficulty level (my games are usually at Monarch) to keep the challenge up. Does anyone do this, or have any advice on rules, maptypes, etc., that might be helpful?

[rah]

Even better, when you're in the staging screen, put all three humans on the same team (team number 1)
You'll have contact immediately and be able to share research, etc.
You can put 4 or 5 ai's on the the same team (team number 2) for a real challange. Or add more ai's.

If you put all the AI's on different teams, it will likely be too easly due to your combined researching.