Hey all,

First off, I want to say that this is a great game with great support from the developers. I have a question about what the A.I. is doing when I adjust the difficulty level from Beginner to Normal. I've played through four games on beginner using several methods to achive victory (i.e., technological, military, etc.) . I won pretty easily each time...yes, I know that not all A.I. algorithms were churning at the time to crush me....but I felt that I had (have) a pretty good grasp of the game and the strategy behind it. After those first games I then decided to move up to normal difficulty to test my skill (or lack thereof) . Well, the short story is I got crushed each time. I thought I knew all the nuances of the game....

On beginner, the A.I. made sense to me. I guess I'm not talking about individual race A.I. but the "galaxy" interaction between races. I know that previous posts have touched on this A.I. interaction before but I didn't really understand their comments until I moved up in difficulty. In beginner, it seems that the A.I. assists you in warfare with other races (alliance or not). I saw plenty of "here's our finest...." whether it was starbases or ships. This made sense even when I wasn't trading with these other races at the time. I THOUGHT that these "alliances" (even though they were't technically alliances per the 'treaties' menu -> i.e., blue lines) were somehow based on your alignment of good/neutral/evil. It would make sense that if I aligned toward evil and the Altarians were at war with me that the Yor or Drengin would come to my aid (or offer aid) because they would be historically at odds with the Alterians. Your enemies' enemy is my friend kind of argument. Maybe it just so happened that in my games on the beginner level that the above just happened out of coincidence but on normal difficulty all the races come at me at the same time no matter what alignment I choose.

I tried being good, evil, or neutral -- playing as a custom race for neutral, or Drengin for evil. Each time when one race (it didn't matter which) declared war on me then at least three to four other races declared war on me within 5 turns. On the treaties menu none of these races had any alliances whith each other whatsoever. It seems that however I play I am fodder for the computer A.I.'s feasting. In one instance, even though there were no alliances, the Drengin would send their fleets in on my planets while the Altarians sat nearby with troop transports. Maybe if this happened once then I would call it coincidence but it happened with the Terrans and the Drengin I can't believe that trade makes two so philosophically opposed races come together to defeat (me) a race who was declared war on by one of them. Sure, trade should be a factor but based on the treaties menu it is the absolute determination?

Even on normal levels, if was a computer opponent wouldn't I "know" what these other races were about to do with their transports if my fleet of fighters eliminated defenses on a planet? Especially races 180 degrees opposite to my alignment? Why would the A.I. (ie., the Drengin) elimnate my defenses that would hand over a bunch of galacitc realestate to another race (Altarians) they do not have an alliance with? It just doesn't make any sense on a galaxy point of view. Strategically, even when playing on a "every-race-for-themselves" map there still has to be some sort of "leaning" between the races that are evil against the ones that are good. The evil races would want to help me because of my present war with one of the goodies ( biding time for the evil races to back stab me) while if I were playing a good guy, the good races supply me money/ships so that they can better their position of influence/technology. If I aligned neutral, there must be some tug one way or another to lure me to the good side or dark side apart from the "three choices" screens or the tech "good and evil".

This all seems to be lacking in the harder difficulty. I don't know if others have encountered similar things. On a player-centric reference between you and your "visible" part of the map, the A.I. is great and they act like they should but on a galaxy wide tug for supremacy things don't seem right. It seems very hard to for a player (maybe just me...) to form an alliance with another race so when all these races declare war on me nearly at once then there is basically no way to win. When things go bad, it is pretty early in the game so I either can't tech to create both defenses and a good diplomacy. It is not like I am attacking any one race to induce a sudden cascade of "declaring war" from both good and evil races. Oh, that brings up another quesiton of mine, does the AI of the other races distinguish between a race that declares war on you or you creating the war against some one else? Seems to me that if I am trying to be nice to everyone and an evil race comes to cause havoc on my good society that the good-aligned races would offer help NOT also declare war on me and seem to assist the evil race. This seem to happen time and time again.

Sorry for the rambling...

-- Any thoughts on the "galaxy frame of reference" A.I.?
-- Is there some trigger that causes the computer AI to come at me (too low in tech,economy, etc.)?

thanks in advance!