So then, I've been enjoying games playing with this mode purely because I find it a lot more taxing late game and really plays to the games culture/tech/diplomacy side instead of simply rushing to get guns.
 
This was yesterday afternoons...nights and early mornings experience, I was playing on a continents map with 5 other AI. On one island there was me (Ghandi), Washington and Bizmark. I helped Washington for well over 3000 years, trading resources, research agreements, even planning secret pacts against Bizmark and stealing his land. After we eventually wiped him off the world, Washington moved over to the other island and I continued to provide support. Then he retreated and made peace with his enemies, with zero warning.
 
My army was destroyed trying to escape across the sea, leaving me very weak and in need of protection. No worries there, me and Washington are tight. Why is he massing armies on my border? WAR?! You ARE joking right? It took him all of 6 turns to steamroller me down.
 
This is why I LOVE this mode! Yeah, it may seem annoying but theres are the great moments in Civ, when you're frantically trying to fix things and swing deals before its all over. When its all over you look at the defeat screen and just say 'you dick' with a smile.
 
Anyone else had similar experiences? Or something totally different perhaps? Have at it Giantbomb! :D

I dunno if I would call that fun because of the radical shifts. I think I would call that an irrational events because of horrible AI.
But if it makes the game more interesting for you then more power to you, I would throw a keyboard at a fucking wall.

Every game I play is pretty much the one city challenge. The game punishes you so severely for settling, I rarely see the point. If I don't have one city, then I'll have 2, 3 max.

yeah, if it was a human opponent who bested me with guile then I would be tickled. But it sounds like your AI was just following a pre-determined routine, seeing that you were weakened and exploiting it.

Lol, apparently you find the aggressive AI endearing. This is right now, my one and only complaint with the game. 

The AI plays the way I would in its situation, it sees a weakness and exploits it. As for not throwing my keyboard at the wall, I've always been a pretty chilled out gamer, especially vs AI because I find it depressing to essentially shout at a box.
 
I'm sure if it was against other humans however and this happened, yeah it'd be a puuure dick move, lol. Would be interesting to see non-wartime peace treaties however, so you could establish a 'dont fuck me over' agreement before you throw yourself into a war and the possibility of being weakened for a chunk of time.
 
Also, @ThatFrood I totally get what you mean about being punished for expanding, the first couple of games I went landgrab crazy, only to have the other Civilizations rise against me because they considered me too big a threat to leave alone. Seems a very odd way of thinking, 'that guy owns half the world lets start a fight'.

All I do is expand. I usually have at least 15 cities going at once. 
 
Maybe I've been playing Zerg in SC2 too much, I don't know. But it suits me fine and I don't even really go military all that much (no need.. when It's 1700 and I have battlecruisers and tanks against archers..) 

The least amount of cities i've owned is 2, however I puppet a lot of cities when someone attacks me. They see me and think i'm weak, I defend then counter attack, take a few cities and they want peace. 

" I dunno if I would call that fun because of the radical shifts. I think I would call that an irrational events because of horrible AI. But if it makes the game more interesting for you then more power to you, I would throw a keyboard at a fucking wall. "

" Seems a very odd way of thinking, 'that guy owns half the world lets start a fight'. "

best way I've found to win in one city challege is to load the map with way too many extra city states and extra civs so that everybody would be stuck and have to go to war and stuff to expand. This would basically leave you extra time to tech up and stuff before one or two civs start dominating to the point that you gotta pay attention to them.