One thing I like to do during the game is to have a research pact with a nearby weak civ. For this game I chose the irish, I had been nice to them for ages and they trusted and liked me. Now it seems that for some reason when you have a research pact, the Al civ makes a new discovery nearly every turn. So in order to benefit I have to make sure that it is researching something that I have not got. Every time it discovers something we just swap advances. But on this game it reached a point where it kept trying to research things that I already had. Also by this time I was pretty powerful, so I would demand it stop research on that particular thing. Eventually sick of my requests to stop research, the last request had to be backed with the threat of war, it began researching Gaia controller. After about 15 turns around 1900, before I had even discovered tank warfare, I was able to trade something (I forget what) for the Gaia controller. To cut a long story short I plodded away got my tanks, stacks of 12 just cut through other civs like a hot knife through butter. 1950 victory, even though I had only just discovered adv. military tactics.

Has anyone any better ideas.
And I do think the Als are too passive and very stupid, what can I do to make them more challenging?