Actually, what SE needs is more disadvantages for the humans.
If sensor range was actually limited and you didn't automatically
know everything about a system just by being in it the AI would have much more chance to surprise you. As it is, no AI ever coded yet can out-strategize the human brain. We can see things happening in many systems and see what the AI is 'thinking' while it is too slow to finish its
own thoughts let alone guess ours. Viz, the yo-yo effect when it sees one threat, moves fleets and then moves them in another direction next turn because it sees another threat...
That said, yes, there's plenty of room for improvement of the AI, especially the development/infrastructure part of it. If it were smart enough to re-designate colonies to different types based on its needs, or even just change the course of colonizers to worlds with the type of resource it needs like a human would rather than 'force' the next colony to be the type it needs regardless of the planet value, it would be dramatically more effective.
[ January 06, 2003, 02:03: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]