[Tomgs]

I have started giving the AI a bonus and it does help, you can really tell a difference even with a small bonus. The AI seems to research point defences to stop the early "missle rush" strategy and they do seem to be able to get higher tech levels in shipbuilding earlier than I do. They also seem to protect their home planets a bit better, I was in one protracted battle on a homeworld that had 10 medium and 16 small weapon platforms that between them had 80 plasma missles and 10 point defences. That really makes it hard to get close enough to the planet to take out those WPs. This was only 4 years into the game (40 turns) so it was still fairly early.