mind you, caravans beelining through the badlands and thumbing their noses at the really big bosses are a bit much. There is no inner game logic to this.

I've recently had caravans destroyed by faction monsters and ruffians...

I'm actually trying to prove him wrong by showing from the same game in the OP one of my caravans getting destroyed by monsters but I don't have a save early enough.. 

Anyways Brad you are going to have to trust me monsters DO attack caravans.. (mine at least.. )

but frogboy, in that screenshot the monster went on the same tile as the AI caravan and didn't kill it. How do you explain that

monster moved onto the tile first, and then the caravan moved onto the monster.  caravans don't attack, so no fight was initiated

Brad. 

Monsters just 'wander' onto players caravans, and the player's caravans always die.  Monsters sometimes just wander into AI caravans, and just stack.

Monsters always destroy player's improvements.  Monsters sometimes end up on top of AI improvements without destroying them.

Monsters always walk one tile on player roads, in player dominion.  Monsters sometimes walk 4 tiles on AI roads, in AI dominion.

Monsters always head towards a player city within 2-3 turns, and destroy it when we ignore them. Monsters sometimes spend 50 turns in the tile next to a AI city, and do not attack it. 

Monsters always attack my weak units when I accidentally end the turn next to them.  The only times I have seen monsters attack AI units is when the AI unit puts itself on the path the monster was already walking.  And even then, sometimes they just end together.

This I have seen myself, multiple times. My wife teaches confirmation bias, I have a minor in statistics. I am NOT seeing things, I know there is a difference how the monsters see the player and the AI.  Whenever I post well documented threads with pictures of this happening, I get told 'This is because you play on ridiculous".

I am asking a simple question. At what difficulty will I see the monsters treating the AI as they treat the player, and the AI treating the player in diplomacy as they treat other AIs.

I will play an ironman game on that difficulty, saving every turn I remember.  I will then go, and reload, and see what has been happening.  The results will speak for themselves.

Thank you.  I will do what I said I would.  I wish all experiments were as simple as this one.

And whatever it shows, I will use that as ammo for all of my arguments WAY LONGER than what it takes for everyone to be tired of it.

Some I noticed is that caravans can move through monsters. I have many routes going through areas with 10-50 monster armies. It takes several trips before the caravan dies. It is generally able to move through them. In the context of the OP, I see no conclusive proof of your conclusion.

I think the problem here is that people just assume that there is some code making this happen. We don't need to convince the devs to find that code and delete it. We need to convince them to add a ton of logic to monsters that sets very clear parameters on their movement and attacks. There might not be any code allowing caravans to move through monsters, but there needs to be some code forcing a battle when they are on the same tile.

I'd love it if you did that!

Thanks in advance mate! 

BTW, I would be delighted to create an AI Spoilers thread or something where we can discuss some of the indepth stuff.  But I also don't want to ruin the game for everyone else since it takes some of the magic out.

As a mathematician I would love to see how the AI in this game is run. Given all the randomness in this game I'm thoroughly facinated to see what the AI is doing and how its doing it. But I agree that this would spoil the magic in the game.

I grew up in Los Angeles and know first hand that movie magic can be ruined just by knowing where and how something was filmed. Informative, but not as entertaining.

I recommend that you wait for awhile before revealing all your secrets.

I don't understand the fuss about all this. I have no problems with monsters at all since 0.992. Sure they kill me and my cities sometimes, but I've seen them destroying AI outposts and cities just as well. And the occasional caravan? Even less frequent than random events so I'm guessing the AI would lose the occasional caravan too.