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heya,

i just finished a games on tough level, huge galaxy, other options default, yor-race with industrialist government.

I started the game, quickly researching some weapons and first ship i bought was a 1 weapon fast engines fighter.
I managed to destroy all colony ships of my human neighbour. Then the first strange thing happend. The human protected
his planets with ship which had NO weapon or defence at all, just empty hulls.
I think the AI should be able to save resources for research some weapons before producing ships. Those defenders were
useless anyway, it wasnt too hard to guess that in this early stage i couldnt have researched planetary invasion. Anyway humans were history some turns l8ta.
Their neighbours, the Thalan Empire, was even behaviong strange, once my little armada cleared off any orbiting ships, it was only a matter of some turns to spam enough invasion troops.
Hmm, capturing their planets, i found them building entertainment networks nearly all over the place... At least they were happy to be conquered. So why does the AI on its hardest AI level such nonsense? The Thalan could have been able to
counter my attack, if resources wouldnt have been used more wisely...
The Drengin was the most powerful race long time, their military light years away from my all-out nearly no research low level ship spam. But when i came to war with them, the dregin left most of their ships orbiting planets, only some planets had orbital defences. Most of them could be cleared 1by1. Instead of moving those ships outta orbit to form a devastating strike force, the dregin preferred to die like a sitting duck. There were some attempts, to spam unprotected colony ships, and he managed to capture 2 planets back... but that was really all before they sacrificed their way better ships to mine.
The Torians made the best deal: they were last to be ion galaxy and i was able to offer them enough to get all their planets,
rofl .

Conclusion: I think AI should be able to make more useful decision compared to the situation the NPC race is in. It would have been easy for the NPC Races to stop my all out low level crusade with that resources they had in their hands.
Dont take me wrong, i dont demand the AI to be unbeatable and unstoppable machine, but at least it shouldnt do such dump things on highest possbile AI level (if i understood that right, tough = highest AI without boni).

my 2 cents,

greets
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