@Administrator said:
the AI doesn't want to trade with the player in the first place since the player possibly is contesting a spot on the board the Ai wants to build on also.
But how broad is that scope of "spots it wants"!? I mean I can see if it's the next move for the AI but not any possible spot it might want or within a reasonable number of moves (ie, the risk of the trade is low). Or often a human player would concede one spot in order to achieve a more valuable spot (ie, you can't have it all 
)
Plus, most of the time the AI can't really decide what it's doing, it starts building towards a settlement and then trades all the settlement items away for an incomplete city, ha ha ha (although I have noticed it's been better, a little more determined and aggressive about spots... even trying to get someone by going around when blocked)