I'm a mediocre at best TW player. However, I have played far more civ than TW in my life (although not much of either lately) and I fully admit that I can't speak to VH/VH not being a challenge to very good players, but there is absolutely no chance that multiple people in this thread crush civ on the hardest difficulty levels regularly. Go check a civ board and guys who are absolute addicts about those games will lose on deity (is impossible new? I haven't downloaded any expansions for civ IV, 'cause I haven't played in a while). The AI is still terrible at warring, but the bonuses are extreme. I don't have exact numbers but each AI will start out with an enormous tech/army lead at the beginning and be able to outproduce at least 3:1 from the get go. Your growth curve simply can never catch up and all the advanced tactics in the world can't make up the difference. You simply won't be able to win by domination or anything else before someone launches a spaceship. If you mess with the map settings and game speeds you can find ways to win on any difficulty level, but there are map settings and difficulty levels combinations that I guarantee absolutely nobody can beat without cheating in civ. I'm sure people have gotten better since I last looked in on that community and new tactics have come around, but I'll be shocked if more than a half dozen people are beating any kind of standard civ map regularly on the hardest difficulty with more than a very specialized civilization or two.

None of that is to say that civ is a better game. They emphasize very different parts of the game (titles kinda say it all) and depending on how you like your world domination one or the other will suit you, but when people complain about the difficulty on vh/vh and say they destroy civ series games as well, I have a hard time believing either claim (although admittedly the stock difficulty m/m vs. noble civ is crazy easy in comparison 'cause their AI is terrible at war).

In general though for people who like these games enough to be really really good, I'm sorry but AIs will never be able to compete with you. Yes, you can give them huge imbalances to counteract their total inability to strategize, but if you want to play against a smart aggressive opponent, your only option (for the forseeable future) will be multiplayer.

Anyway, this was probably a little long and rude to a few players for a first post in a forum, but I've lurked here on and off since RTW and just started MTW2 again before I got ETW and some of these claims made me finally sign up. lol