[raynor]

Just finished up my max bonus game and went back to some previous saved games.

Yep. The AI gets the same bonus for intel that he does for research: 5x whatever the colonies produce.

Towards the end of the game when Mega Evil Empire set them all against me, intel started to get a bit annoying. Every turn, I'd get a report about one or two planets being damaged, a couple of planets rioting because of AI Puppet Party attacks, food contamination killing population, etcetera.
Quite, quite annoying.

Most of it I ignored until I realized a couple of colonizes were blockaded by my own former ships!!

I'll take a look at some of the other systems and let you know what I find.