[raynor]

Play a medium bonus game. Give the AI 5000 racial points but don't use any. Don't use mines. Don't use Stellar Manipulation. Fight all your battles in strategic mode instead of tactical. Don't do any trades with the AI. If the game is still too easy, don't use any units at all. When you attack, use at most half your forces in one mass. At the end of every turn, leave your forces in orbit around a planet you just captured or destroyed. If your forces are just one sector away from the planet, the enemy forces might not engage you. Eliminate black holes from your galaxy maps. My intuition says you should probably remove nebulas as well.

If the AI is still too easy, you might try disallowing all treaties between yourself and the AI. Another idea is to start out with 10 planets. Then, once the game has started, take control of a neutral race.

IMHO, the AI seems much weaker in larger galaxies than in smaller ones. If you have enough time to develop several systems before you encounter the AI, you will almost certainly win. But if your home system borders his, then you will be in for a greater challenge. As poor as the AI is, if you play a high bonus game and have only two warp points leading from your home system and both those warp points lead to AI home systems, I don't think you are going to win the game.

Definitely get the TDM ModPack. Malfador is wisely incorporating the ingenious AI improvements developed by the talented Daynarr, Mephisto, Tampa_Gamer and others.

But as others have stated time and again, there really isn't any AI for the game. Instead, SEIV just attempts to 'mimic' semi-intelligent behaviour while playing 'at' the game rather than actually playing it. The AI doesn't play to win. Rather, it just plays so as to simulate intelligent behaviour. The SEIV AI is much less the AI of a chess program than the equivalent of an Eliza-like computer psychiatrist designed to fool you into think there is some human intelligence behind its decisions.