even when you’re building alliances or trading relationships it is generally to gain some temporary benefit until you are in a position to defeat your partner later on (whether militarily, scientifically, etc).
This is exactly what made me gravitate away from Civ games and more towards Paradox strategy, where the AI actually behaves more like a real country would do instead of a player trying to win a game.
I’d love a city builder based on making gritty industrial cyberpunk megacities, with plenty of verticality and layering. You know, the places where there’s nothing but concrete, steel and neon for kilometers both horizontally and vertically, and a colonies of mutant cannibals fighting against giant rats in the derelict areas near the bottom.