-I've noticed that resort bases are still very important to a healthy economy. In my first game with the new patch they made a huge difference in my economy. I built 2 in good but not great scenic locations (in the 40-50% range, there were no fancy black holes in the neighbourhood) and they allowed me to turn a small surplus while maintaining a decent sized fleet to stomp on my weaker neighbours and once you take out one or two smaller empires you've basically won the game. The imporance of resort bases in itself is neither good nor bad, it's just a design choice. But unfortunatly I seem to notice that the AI barely builds them... or perhaps is very slow in building them. I can't say that they never build them because I've seen one pop up in the disputed territory section of the diplomatic screen, but they don't seem to be going all out like they do with research bases or random mining locations. This is problematic because the aliens don't have a lot of cash flow going (I wouldn't either if it weren't for those resort bases!), making them all easy targets.
-Enemies use their fleets far better but I still wouldn't call it good. E.g. I was still able to hop from enemy planet to enemy planet invading and pulling all troops off and the enemy would never try to take these undefended planets back at all. There were fleets roaming around killing off all the small spaceports that I built on these planets (and subsequently rebuilt after they left since they cost peanuts, only to see them destroyed again and me to rebuild again but because they cost peanuts this isn't a big deal) and also mines all over the place. It's good to see enemy fleets active. But they're not doing a good job, they're essentially only waging a minor war of attrition. They will lose this since while they are destroying some of my small spaceports and mines (which I don't mind rebuilding since other factions will be very reluctant to build mines in your systems, if they do this at all) costing me a little bit of money I'm taking out their planets until there are none left... I even saw a fleet with a troop transport doing nothing but this type of attrition warfare, never going for a planetary invasion at all. The only time when these AI fleets made a difference is when the popped in the middle of an attempt of mine to take out a reasonably well defended planet (medium spaceport), costing me a cruiser and forcing me to withdraw. But that may have been a refueling coincidence or something because it never happened in other cases where it would have been a great move to send in a fleet to counter an underpowered attack of mine.
I think the problem here might be my boost from the resort bases while the lack of this income really hurts the AI factions, because they can't field as many spaceships and troops.
But basically you can still spin circles around the AI in this patch when it comes to fleet usage. So anyone else notice this or is it just the ay this particular game played out?
-there are still many empires out there that don't or barely colonize. In the game I played there was one empire that was able to keep up with me for a long time (around 40ish until some races declared war on me and I shot up to 80+ from all the easy pickings in the war), several that were more than half behind me (10-25ish) and then a whole bunch of empires with 1 to 3 colonies. I played a standard galaxy with 11 races.
PS I think the patch is great but there are still issues where tweaking could improve gameplay... hopefully the expansion will further improve the strategic AI!
PPS I will now start a game in which the AI gets a head start with its empires and see how it plays out [:)]
Some things I noticed with the new patch
-
LeonTheNeon
- Posts: 29
- Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 10:26 am
RE: Some things I noticed with the new patch
I've noticed that the AI tends to like MEGA-Fleets (tm). I see it running around with fleets of 26-40 ships. Whereas I while have 5 fleets of 12 ships, 1-2 scout fleets, 1-2 transport fleets, for example. This gives me flexibility over the AI. If I want to crush his fleet I just bring all my ships together. If I want to attack several places at once I can. You don't need more than 8-10 ships to overcome most defenses except a high end large space port.
On the defense, the MEGA-fleet (tm) is even worse as it can only be in one place at a time. It tends to move slowly and spends a lot of time assembling and fueling or arriving piecemeal.
A vast improvement from earlier versions, but I agree with you there is some room for improvement.
On the defense, the MEGA-fleet (tm) is even worse as it can only be in one place at a time. It tends to move slowly and spends a lot of time assembling and fueling or arriving piecemeal.
A vast improvement from earlier versions, but I agree with you there is some room for improvement.
RE: Some things I noticed with the new patch
Indeed, resort bases are now an important part of an empire. I managed to reinforce my fleet significantly after building a few of them, and that helped when I waged war against 2 other empires. I like that, and I did notice the ai building them too.
As for the AI empires, I don't have any experience with past versions but I find it excellent. The AI is expanding faster than my empire on average and they explored a lot more, as well as research. If I hadn't made my custom designs for research, resort and construction bases as well as for capital ships I would be dead now. And the AI does seem to use troops a lot. In my first real war I had a big problem with the enemy taking 2 of my colonies over every time I recaptured them, and I had to cripple his economy to make any real progress in the war. Of course by the time the war ended I had lost half of my economic bases and that plunged me in a dark period of debt. Resort bases helped to give me a boost from +2000-3000 after I got out of debt. Now the galaxy map is filled with the activity from all those empires.
Of course, there are empires that don't develop, but I've seen new empires being formed by rebellious colonies of bigger and evil empires. Also, some small empires(like 1 colony) manage to get out of the dark age at some point then they expand quickly, and provide productive trade partners. However, I've seen that there are more empires that grow than the standard 1 planet empire, which compensates. It's all related to the location, because even I had trouble expanding from the edge of the galaxy as a human, and the empires that stayed at 1 planet were made of humanoid races. I've also noticed that they were overwhelmed by pirates, so that might be a factor.
But overall, the AI puts up a good fight. Like the Teekan empire in my game, that expanded from 40 colonies to 100 in a couple of years, and now owns most of the galaxy(180 colonies), despite my efforts to beat them to it and they seem to be able to conquer any enemies pretty quickly. Plus they managed to explore and expand so quickly they had all the rare luxury resources before anyone else.
The fastest way the other empires expanded was through war, as they conquered each other I was left behind. Sometimes, they war so much they grow weak quickly, and that might be a factor that made you think the ai doesn't manage their forces well. I had an easy picking of a sluken empire because they had lost most of their stuff in a huge war with the kaidan militant empire.
Also, the AI fortifies the important planets very quickly and very well. I have yet to be able to conquer a capital, but that might also be from my lack of transports [8|] ...
I'd say that's a very good AI. But that's just my opinion.
Cheers.
As for the AI empires, I don't have any experience with past versions but I find it excellent. The AI is expanding faster than my empire on average and they explored a lot more, as well as research. If I hadn't made my custom designs for research, resort and construction bases as well as for capital ships I would be dead now. And the AI does seem to use troops a lot. In my first real war I had a big problem with the enemy taking 2 of my colonies over every time I recaptured them, and I had to cripple his economy to make any real progress in the war. Of course by the time the war ended I had lost half of my economic bases and that plunged me in a dark period of debt. Resort bases helped to give me a boost from +2000-3000 after I got out of debt. Now the galaxy map is filled with the activity from all those empires.
Of course, there are empires that don't develop, but I've seen new empires being formed by rebellious colonies of bigger and evil empires. Also, some small empires(like 1 colony) manage to get out of the dark age at some point then they expand quickly, and provide productive trade partners. However, I've seen that there are more empires that grow than the standard 1 planet empire, which compensates. It's all related to the location, because even I had trouble expanding from the edge of the galaxy as a human, and the empires that stayed at 1 planet were made of humanoid races. I've also noticed that they were overwhelmed by pirates, so that might be a factor.
But overall, the AI puts up a good fight. Like the Teekan empire in my game, that expanded from 40 colonies to 100 in a couple of years, and now owns most of the galaxy(180 colonies), despite my efforts to beat them to it and they seem to be able to conquer any enemies pretty quickly. Plus they managed to explore and expand so quickly they had all the rare luxury resources before anyone else.
The fastest way the other empires expanded was through war, as they conquered each other I was left behind. Sometimes, they war so much they grow weak quickly, and that might be a factor that made you think the ai doesn't manage their forces well. I had an easy picking of a sluken empire because they had lost most of their stuff in a huge war with the kaidan militant empire.
Also, the AI fortifies the important planets very quickly and very well. I have yet to be able to conquer a capital, but that might also be from my lack of transports [8|] ...
I'd say that's a very good AI. But that's just my opinion.
Cheers.
[/img]RE: Some things I noticed with the new patch
I took one of the AI's planets and was building a starbase to fuel from. Things were pretty quiet and I was defending the planet with my largest fleet of 4 cruisers and 6 destroyers. That fleet had more firepower than the whole enemy empire put together. Suddenly the AI fleet popped in and started attacking my fleet. I was like lol as I picked off the frigates and destroyers one at a time. Then I got a message, the planet had fallen..they kept my fleet busy and then they had warped in 3 troop transports and zerged the planet. I had to retreat, there was nowhere to get fuel. I took out his fleet but it didn't matter, I lost the planet.
Good AI.
Good AI.
RE: Some things I noticed with the new patch
Hehe, they did the same thing to me sort of, warped in a inferior fleet which I was picking off but they then put a lot of troops onto the planet (my homeworld) I had 8 troop units on the planet, after the battle I had 1 left, so luckily my guys on the ground held out for me. They then warped what was left of their fleet away (and had rebuilt it to full strength in just a few minutes).
Other thing I noticed that I thought was quite impressive, I'm at war with the Dhayut and they would attack a mining base and I would move my ships to respond, when they arrived they jumped immediately and attacked me elsewhere, and repeated, I couldn't catch them because the Dhayut special tech is a hyperdrive which went almost twice as fast as mine, so it was hopeless trying to catch them with a fleet. In the end I gave up and just went and bombarded their homeworld with a Capital Ship I had found as a wreck, my reputation dropped hugely, but it effectively removed them from the game (homeworld pop was reduced to 300M).
Other thing I noticed that I thought was quite impressive, I'm at war with the Dhayut and they would attack a mining base and I would move my ships to respond, when they arrived they jumped immediately and attacked me elsewhere, and repeated, I couldn't catch them because the Dhayut special tech is a hyperdrive which went almost twice as fast as mine, so it was hopeless trying to catch them with a fleet. In the end I gave up and just went and bombarded their homeworld with a Capital Ship I had found as a wreck, my reputation dropped hugely, but it effectively removed them from the game (homeworld pop was reduced to 300M).
"My body may be confined to this chair, but my mind is free to explore the universe" - Stephen Hawking
RE: Some things I noticed with the new patch
About AIs that don't develop & expand beyond a few colonies, I think they're due mainly to two factors: 1) pointless wars early on & 2) pirates. In my current games, there were two factions that started in roughly the same area of the galactic ring, when I found them, they had just a few colonies each, were at war with each other, and were sending ships after ships to an independent colony that was swarming with pirates. A never ending three way battle was taking place in that system, supposedly preventing both factions from expanding. Two other factions only had their starting colony, I believe because pirates had destroyed their original mining stations / ships and they could never recover from it.
RE: Some things I noticed with the new patch
I havent even EVER built a resort base, and i thought my income was fine.
*goes to build a few*
*goes to build a few*
RE: Some things I noticed with the new patch
Oh you are in for a shock then. Resort bases at black holes is where the cash is at.
RE: Some things I noticed with the new patch
thanks for the input, maybe I've just gotten too familiar with the AI behavour...
I started a game with the development slider two further notches to the right, so all the alien races started out with 5-15ish planets and I with one along with a tech and fleet disadvantage. It was harder at first because most of the good planets are gone wherever you end up and races with special colonisation skills (I always play a human democracy) have more time to snatch those fancy non continental planets away from you before you're able to colonize them... However after a bit of playing I'm easily the strongest power in the game again [:(]
some things I noticed here
-factions splitting off are a major problem for the AI! Just about every AI empire experienced at least one revolution which makes their empire split up into two weak factions... booo!!!!! IMO such revolutions should be a really rare occurence like they were in civilization, more for the occassional flavour experience rather than a constant dispersion of AI power.
-in both games I notice that certain resources seem to be rarer than the extremely rare resources, there seemed to be only one source for that bifurian silk (that purple icon) and the rapidian ale (that black bottle icon with the reddish tip), as well as for the marble. On the other hand oddly enough there were two planets with korabbian spice [:)]. I've never seen that before
-resort bases worked again as I figured they would, building them was even more imporant here since they were an easy boost to my income to work away the development handicap. The AI really dropped the ball here, e.g. totally neglecting a 89% black hole location right next to their planets!! I can't say that they're totally not programmed to do it because I've seen them, but they either have a very low build priority or the AI is too slow in figuring out that building them is a good idea (eg perhaps it won't build in scenic locations with only planets around that are still developing, not realising that these planets will become superhuge sources for tourists minutes later?)
-can't say much about the military aspect here because to be honest I deliberatly picked on the weakest empires first and before I knew it I was five times bigger than the second biggest empire [:)], in no small part due to the many revolutions the AI suffered from. I did see a pissed AI empire block my home planet then (when I declared war on the whole galaxy to see what kind of fight they'd put up) they broke the blockade of this planet (which was pretty much impregnable of course) and went to another planet in my home galaxy which only had a small space port and they invaded it. This was a good move as such but still hopelessly doomed... they have way too little troops to wage any lasting campaign. They took it just in time (with 2 troops remaining) before my home fleet transport arrived with 5 reinforcements, needless to say a couple seconds later the planet was mine again with them having no possiblity whatsoever to do any planet invasions... I mean if you're going to pick a fight by blockading my home planet bring some troops damnit!!!!!!!!! At that point my main invasion fleet had 25 troops in them without being at full capacity!
-a very good side effect from the development handicap was that AI empires had a whole lot more troops on their initial planets. I on the other hand had a whole less troops due to my development handicap, this continued for a long time as I lost a lot of troops in attacking these planets. Very good indeed.
-there seem to be less ancient ship goodies out there which is a good thing because they were a big imbalance, especially since the AI doesn't make good use of them (I routinely see powerful ancient AI capital ships just frozen in the location they were found)
-there seem to be more technology goodies available through exploring ruins. The one that gives you the tech to build big ships and the death ray is really overpowered when you find it in one of the first ruins you come across!
-I really like the change they made to the "dead zone" [:)]
-I feel the diplomatic aspect of the game is still lacking. Even at higher agression levels the AI is still pretty passive. I don't want to turn it up to the highest level because I don't want the AI acting like a headless chicken on steroids, I want them to make an informed decision where they hit me when it is rational to do so, because I'm weak in some way they can exploit. I never really have to bother with building huge defences or keeping a defensive fleet even in far flung corners of my empire even if they are right next to the core worlds of a pissed off empire.
-More generally speaking I think that the AI should get pissed not just when you're trespassing inside their colonized systems, but also when you're colonizing closely to their systems, even if they didn't occupy those. You know, border frictions. Seriously, it's not right that I can send out entire colonization waves towards far flung planets and the AI empires present there accept me as a local. They should realize that a) I'm an easy target (at least at first) and b) I'm essentially making an agressive move because I'm snatching away planets from their future generations
-I think the game should differentiate when it comes to tensions due to having mines in another empire's colonized systems. On the one hand you have the situation where you had your mine there first and then another empire colonizes a planet in the same system. The game can treat this hypothesis the way it treats it now, the AI wants you out of there but is pretty laid back about it and is willing to trade you for the mine at a fair price. On the other hand there is the situation where you knowingly build a mine after it has been colonized already by another empire. The AI (and you) should not be laying back about this. They should have the right to kick you out violently without a reputation hit. The reason for this is that it's very easy to build mines in another empire's territory then exchange it for something useful. They are willing to offer a pretty decent price even if the resources are not particularly great. It's very easy to abuse this. For example I was able to mitigate my development handicap by deliberatly building a mine in another empire's territory. This mine significantly increased invalue after a little while and I was able to trade it for some money and tech. With a poorer empire I was able to trade it for a little bit of money and their galaxy map, kinda handy for me since they had a head start in exploring! It's even worse than you may think because the moment I decided to trade away these mines is... the moment there was a pirate strike against them. So I would have lost those mines anyway since I was too weak to spare ships for these mines and had I wanted to I could have rebuilt these mines since the AI is also not great at fighting off pirate raids.
-I think part of the reason why the AI is so beatable is that they try to maintain a large spacefleet at all times. I do the opposite. I maintain a sizeable but much smaller spacefleet than I can pay for (but I raise a lot of troops). For example in this game I only had 3 fleets for 113 colonies. A fleet for my core systems (with 5 ground troops) (basically just ships I build knowing I'm going to send them somewhere far away later but the home system is a nice waiting room), an invasion fleet (with 25 ground troops) which contains everything from frigates to cap ships and a smaller fleet of cruisers and cap ships to take out pirate bases and for extra strategic mobility against enemies. There were empires of 25 colonies that had a larger military rating than me, but this does not matter because if I'd ever be in a serious war (which never rarely ever happens because the diplomatic AI does not seem to be dynamic enough to identify and take advantage of weaknesses, see above) I'd pump out cruisers and cap ships like nobody's business and the AI is so passive that all I'm going to lose is some mines here and there, which could be painful in circumstances but then on the flip side I've saved mucho cash from not having a large standing fleet that these few mines are inconsequential, especially since I can rebuild them at will if they are in a colonized system since the AI doesn't really go there (it really should do stuff like that if you're weak btw!)...
I think this merrits stressing: with my playing style I would be hard pressed to defend against multiple fleets with forces strong enough to take out small/medium space ports and enough ground troops to take out many weakly defended colonies in a row. But the AI's fleet composition and tactics are the complete opposite, with barely any ground troops and a heavy emphasis on taking out mines. Such attrition tactics will never achieve anything against my playing style (that galactic war I mentionned well I didn't defend against it except for that action I mentionned in my home system and the AI wasn't even able to put me into negative income, which wouldn't have mattered anyway since I had 2 mil in the bank), the AI really needs to try and put boots on the ground on as many planets as it can, preferably prioritized according to your weaknesses (e.g. a decapitation attack against rich highly populated planets if they are weakly defended, or nibbeling away at the recently colonized periphery of your empire if that is weakly defended).
sry for the wall of text [:)]
I started a game with the development slider two further notches to the right, so all the alien races started out with 5-15ish planets and I with one along with a tech and fleet disadvantage. It was harder at first because most of the good planets are gone wherever you end up and races with special colonisation skills (I always play a human democracy) have more time to snatch those fancy non continental planets away from you before you're able to colonize them... However after a bit of playing I'm easily the strongest power in the game again [:(]
some things I noticed here
-factions splitting off are a major problem for the AI! Just about every AI empire experienced at least one revolution which makes their empire split up into two weak factions... booo!!!!! IMO such revolutions should be a really rare occurence like they were in civilization, more for the occassional flavour experience rather than a constant dispersion of AI power.
-in both games I notice that certain resources seem to be rarer than the extremely rare resources, there seemed to be only one source for that bifurian silk (that purple icon) and the rapidian ale (that black bottle icon with the reddish tip), as well as for the marble. On the other hand oddly enough there were two planets with korabbian spice [:)]. I've never seen that before
-resort bases worked again as I figured they would, building them was even more imporant here since they were an easy boost to my income to work away the development handicap. The AI really dropped the ball here, e.g. totally neglecting a 89% black hole location right next to their planets!! I can't say that they're totally not programmed to do it because I've seen them, but they either have a very low build priority or the AI is too slow in figuring out that building them is a good idea (eg perhaps it won't build in scenic locations with only planets around that are still developing, not realising that these planets will become superhuge sources for tourists minutes later?)
-can't say much about the military aspect here because to be honest I deliberatly picked on the weakest empires first and before I knew it I was five times bigger than the second biggest empire [:)], in no small part due to the many revolutions the AI suffered from. I did see a pissed AI empire block my home planet then (when I declared war on the whole galaxy to see what kind of fight they'd put up) they broke the blockade of this planet (which was pretty much impregnable of course) and went to another planet in my home galaxy which only had a small space port and they invaded it. This was a good move as such but still hopelessly doomed... they have way too little troops to wage any lasting campaign. They took it just in time (with 2 troops remaining) before my home fleet transport arrived with 5 reinforcements, needless to say a couple seconds later the planet was mine again with them having no possiblity whatsoever to do any planet invasions... I mean if you're going to pick a fight by blockading my home planet bring some troops damnit!!!!!!!!! At that point my main invasion fleet had 25 troops in them without being at full capacity!
-a very good side effect from the development handicap was that AI empires had a whole lot more troops on their initial planets. I on the other hand had a whole less troops due to my development handicap, this continued for a long time as I lost a lot of troops in attacking these planets. Very good indeed.
-there seem to be less ancient ship goodies out there which is a good thing because they were a big imbalance, especially since the AI doesn't make good use of them (I routinely see powerful ancient AI capital ships just frozen in the location they were found)
-there seem to be more technology goodies available through exploring ruins. The one that gives you the tech to build big ships and the death ray is really overpowered when you find it in one of the first ruins you come across!
-I really like the change they made to the "dead zone" [:)]
-I feel the diplomatic aspect of the game is still lacking. Even at higher agression levels the AI is still pretty passive. I don't want to turn it up to the highest level because I don't want the AI acting like a headless chicken on steroids, I want them to make an informed decision where they hit me when it is rational to do so, because I'm weak in some way they can exploit. I never really have to bother with building huge defences or keeping a defensive fleet even in far flung corners of my empire even if they are right next to the core worlds of a pissed off empire.
-More generally speaking I think that the AI should get pissed not just when you're trespassing inside their colonized systems, but also when you're colonizing closely to their systems, even if they didn't occupy those. You know, border frictions. Seriously, it's not right that I can send out entire colonization waves towards far flung planets and the AI empires present there accept me as a local. They should realize that a) I'm an easy target (at least at first) and b) I'm essentially making an agressive move because I'm snatching away planets from their future generations
-I think the game should differentiate when it comes to tensions due to having mines in another empire's colonized systems. On the one hand you have the situation where you had your mine there first and then another empire colonizes a planet in the same system. The game can treat this hypothesis the way it treats it now, the AI wants you out of there but is pretty laid back about it and is willing to trade you for the mine at a fair price. On the other hand there is the situation where you knowingly build a mine after it has been colonized already by another empire. The AI (and you) should not be laying back about this. They should have the right to kick you out violently without a reputation hit. The reason for this is that it's very easy to build mines in another empire's territory then exchange it for something useful. They are willing to offer a pretty decent price even if the resources are not particularly great. It's very easy to abuse this. For example I was able to mitigate my development handicap by deliberatly building a mine in another empire's territory. This mine significantly increased invalue after a little while and I was able to trade it for some money and tech. With a poorer empire I was able to trade it for a little bit of money and their galaxy map, kinda handy for me since they had a head start in exploring! It's even worse than you may think because the moment I decided to trade away these mines is... the moment there was a pirate strike against them. So I would have lost those mines anyway since I was too weak to spare ships for these mines and had I wanted to I could have rebuilt these mines since the AI is also not great at fighting off pirate raids.
-I think part of the reason why the AI is so beatable is that they try to maintain a large spacefleet at all times. I do the opposite. I maintain a sizeable but much smaller spacefleet than I can pay for (but I raise a lot of troops). For example in this game I only had 3 fleets for 113 colonies. A fleet for my core systems (with 5 ground troops) (basically just ships I build knowing I'm going to send them somewhere far away later but the home system is a nice waiting room), an invasion fleet (with 25 ground troops) which contains everything from frigates to cap ships and a smaller fleet of cruisers and cap ships to take out pirate bases and for extra strategic mobility against enemies. There were empires of 25 colonies that had a larger military rating than me, but this does not matter because if I'd ever be in a serious war (which never rarely ever happens because the diplomatic AI does not seem to be dynamic enough to identify and take advantage of weaknesses, see above) I'd pump out cruisers and cap ships like nobody's business and the AI is so passive that all I'm going to lose is some mines here and there, which could be painful in circumstances but then on the flip side I've saved mucho cash from not having a large standing fleet that these few mines are inconsequential, especially since I can rebuild them at will if they are in a colonized system since the AI doesn't really go there (it really should do stuff like that if you're weak btw!)...
I think this merrits stressing: with my playing style I would be hard pressed to defend against multiple fleets with forces strong enough to take out small/medium space ports and enough ground troops to take out many weakly defended colonies in a row. But the AI's fleet composition and tactics are the complete opposite, with barely any ground troops and a heavy emphasis on taking out mines. Such attrition tactics will never achieve anything against my playing style (that galactic war I mentionned well I didn't defend against it except for that action I mentionned in my home system and the AI wasn't even able to put me into negative income, which wouldn't have mattered anyway since I had 2 mil in the bank), the AI really needs to try and put boots on the ground on as many planets as it can, preferably prioritized according to your weaknesses (e.g. a decapitation attack against rich highly populated planets if they are weakly defended, or nibbeling away at the recently colonized periphery of your empire if that is weakly defended).
sry for the wall of text [:)]
RE: Some things I noticed with the new patch
I agree on some points but here are some different experiences with the latest patch.
1) I was moving system to system taking each fairly easily - suddenly an AI fleet with transports show up at my home. I had plenty of troops on my home planet but they also landed on a small planet nearby and took it. The problem is my people rebelled in a few months before I could even retake it - so it was a big waste for them.
2) I did notice that as I moved combat ships into an AI territory I got repeated warnings and finally they ordered an embargo on my systems. We also shared a system (1 planet to 1 planet) which was pissing them off too.
3) The AIs core planets are well defended - both with troops AND defensive bases (3 at their home system last time I attacked).
I have to say the AI is much better recently and I'm not in first until I take a smaller/weaker empire (which I have had trouble doing).
Just my 2 cents
Mozo
1) I was moving system to system taking each fairly easily - suddenly an AI fleet with transports show up at my home. I had plenty of troops on my home planet but they also landed on a small planet nearby and took it. The problem is my people rebelled in a few months before I could even retake it - so it was a big waste for them.
2) I did notice that as I moved combat ships into an AI territory I got repeated warnings and finally they ordered an embargo on my systems. We also shared a system (1 planet to 1 planet) which was pissing them off too.
3) The AIs core planets are well defended - both with troops AND defensive bases (3 at their home system last time I attacked).
I have to say the AI is much better recently and I'm not in first until I take a smaller/weaker empire (which I have had trouble doing).
Just my 2 cents
Mozo