One thing to keep in mind is that Gladiator/Q3A bots followed very simple patterns and never played like a human would. Over the time, modders made their own bots that were much more human-like.
Spiterbot was a notorious one. It was capable of strafejumping, rocketjumping, zone denial, pickup timing, risk/reward behavior, enemy power estimates, and all things you would expect from a competent human player. Things like pro-q3dm6 bridge-to-railgun jump weren't a problem for it. It was still too easy to read for a good player, and susceptible to mistakes leading to HP/armor starvation, like avoiding the railgun control line like plague where a human would have tried to outsmart an enemy, risked it, or waited for an enemy mistake. Too bad there never was a technical write-up for the Spiterbot like this one.
(also, the article is from 2001, this should probably be in the title)